HENRIETTA, N.Y. (WROC) – Two Rochester Institute of Technology professors recently had their study published on how to predict the number of people infected by the coronavirus.

The researchers developed a way to solve a well known equation faster to help predict infection rates in other diseases. Scientists are using existing COVID-19 data from John Hopkins University.

Their research found epidemiologists can quickly forecast many different scenarios of how Covid-19 could spread.  Essentially helping public officials make policy decisions about when to impose and lift restrictions aimed at flattening the curve of infection rates.

“So it’s a model that separates the population into three compartments the susceptible the infected and the recovered sometimes called removed if you want the recovered and the deaths together but he tries to track see on the movement of individuals between these three compartments over a span of time,” said Nathaniel Barlow, associate professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences. 

“So if you can give somebody a tool that works faster more quickly that allows you to run more scenarios and then that allows you to be better at your predictions,” said Steven Weinstein, head of RIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering.

Their study was published in the Science Direct Journal.