Impulsive Neural Control to Schedule Antivirals and Immunomodulators for COVID-19.

New SARS-CoV-2 variants escaping the effect of vaccines are an eminent threat. The use of antivirals to inhibit the viral replication cycle or immunomodulators to regulate host immune responses can help to tackle the viral infection at the host level. To evaluate the potential use of these therapies, we propose the application of an inverse optimal neural controller to a mathematical model that represents SARS-CoV-2 dynamics in the host. Antiviral effects and immune responses are considered as the control actions. The variability between infected hosts can be large, thus, the host infection dynamics are identified based on a Recurrent High-Order Neural Network (RHONN) trained with the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The performance of the control strategies is tested by employing a Monte Carlo analysis. Simulation results present different scenarios where potential antivirals and immunomodulators could reduce the viral load.