Optimal social distancing in epidemic control: cost prioritization, adherence and insights into preparedness principles.

The COVID-19 pandemic experience has highlighted the importance of developing general control principles to inform future pandemic preparedness based on the tension between the different control options, ranging from elimination to mitigation, and related costs. Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing has been confirmed to be the critical response tool until vaccines become available. Open-loop optimal control of a transmission model for COVID-19 in one of its most aggressive outbreaks is used to identify the best social distancing policies aimed at balancing the direct epidemiological costs of a threatening epidemic with its indirect (i.