Is social distancing effective?

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scatter of random walk of 1000 molecules at 2m distancing
overlaid line plot of random walk of 1000 molecules at 2m distancing
console output of 2m distancing
console output of 1m distancing

By: Team Z&W

Team members: Jessica Zhu and Eve Wang

Inspiration

Inspired by current pandemic situations, we wanted to test the effectiveness of 2m social distancing in preventing COVID19 transmission.

What it does

Using random walk, we modelled and simulated the 3D Brownian motion of airborne viruses and estimated the probability of a person 2m away from an infected individual coming into contact with airborne viral molecules.

How we built it

The program was written in Python using libraries such as NumPy and Matplotlib. Nested loops were used to run the simulation for 1000 viral molecules for a 2hr duration.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was generating the data necessary to create a 3D plot. We solved this problem by generating a random integers from a range of 3 possible choice with each integer representing the direction of movement for the random motion of the virus. The steps were continuously added to a position variable. A NumPy array was used to store the position of the virus at every step for each of the x, y, and z axes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're very proud of the program that had successfully simulated the airborne viral motion and generated the necessary plots. We're also really happy to say that our estimation for the probability of infection of an individual 2m away is about 2-8% and is in line with what other researches have found which goes to show the accuracy of our model.

What we learned

We've learned a great deal about generating 3D simulation and using NumPy arrays.

What's next?

Next steps would be to make the program more efficient and to simulate it under a more realistic conditions (i.e. what happens when ventilation is introduced, or if masks are worn etc.)

Implementation

We were able to implement the probabilities calculated for individuals wearing masks as well. For example, a person wearing a N95 mask (filters at least 95% of aerosols) standing 1m away from an infected individual, reduces their chances of being contracting COVID from 52% to 3%.