A game theory approach for the assessment of COVID-19 risk and medical resource response in an early-stage pandemic

Abstract This study proposes a two-game theory model to decide on the deployment of health resources in all afflicted districts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we model the interaction of Coronaviruses with a response commander as a two-player zero-sum game and then calculate COVID-19 risk values for each district using the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium. The threat, vulnerability, and consequence of the COVID-19 epidemic on the afflicted state are represented by the risk value. Second, the risk values from all states are applied to calculate a Shapley-Shubik index (SSI) for each district. The medical resources of all districts are distributed fairly depending on their marginal contribution to a simple cooperative game. According to the experimental results, administrators can utilize this framework to quantify the risk of COVID-19 in each afflicted district, and the Shapley-Shubik index is feasible as a method for deploying medical resources. And the SSI division deploys medical resources more efficiently than a proportional (RV) division.