Using Reproduction Number Ro to Study the Impact of Social Distancing on Hospital Beds Required

This article is based on varying the basic reproduction number Ro and simulating its impact on the spread of the virus using a simple Epidemic model called SIR. Ro tells you the average number of people who will catch a disease from one contagious person. If a disease has an Ro of 6, an infected person will transmit the disease to an average of 6 other people, as long as no one has been vaccinated against it or is already immune to it in their community. This is an important number to understand so let's discuss this little bit more below.