No one is sure if Switzerland will see a second wave of the pandemic; if there is one, it will advance more slowly than the first - but it may still cause a high number of additional fatalities. (Visualizations: ETH Zurich)
No one is sure if Switzerland will see a second wave of the pandemic; if there is one, it will advance more slowly than the first - but it may still cause a high number of additional fatalities. (Visualizations: ETH Zurich) - ETH researchers are using a new mathematical model to calculate a possible second wave of the pandemic in Switzerland. Even though such a wave would probably grow more slowly than the first without overloading hospitals, its death toll may turn out to be significantly higher. Should Switzerland see a second wave of the coro rus pandemic, it would proceed more slowly than the first. This is the conclusion reached by Dirk Mohr, Professor of Computational Modeling of Materials in ETH Zurich's Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, and Fadoua Balabdaoui, Senior Scientist in the Seminar for Statistics, based on calculations with a new mathematical model they have specifically developed to forecast the COVID-19 epidemic in Switzerland. "That means the authorities will have more time than they did during the first wave to take action and to adapt measures as the situation evolves," Mohr says. He goes on to point out that the number newly infected would rise more slowly during this second wave, because our society has learnt from its experience with the first wave and will always act with greater caution than it did at the beginning of the pandemic.
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