A Simulation Model to Estimate the Impact of Self-protection and Social Distancing on the Spread of COVID-19 in the Public Transportation (Case Study: Tehran Metro)

Metro is one of the most important urban transportation systems in Tehran. Before the pandemic, almost two million trips were made by metro daily. A crowded metro is one of the most important sources of the outbreak. In this paper, a discrete event model is introduced to simulate the spread of the COVID-19 in Tehran metro. Three types of passengers are defined: Healthy passengers and infected passengers with acute conditions and not acute conditions. Two important ways of preventing virus transmission are self-protection (e.g., wearing a mask) and social distancing. Different scenarios of social distancing and self-protection are surveyed based on multiple replications of the proposed model. Results of the simulation showed that noncompliance with social distancing has an exponentially negative effect on the number of infected passengers. In addition, the compliance of infected passengers with the social distancing and self-protection tips is almost twice important as the compliance of healthy passengers.