  Strong social distancing restrictions have been crucial to controlling the
COVID-19 outbreak thus far, and the next question is when and how to relax
these restrictions. A sequential timing of relaxing restrictions across groups
is explored in order to identify policies that simultaneously reduce health
risks and economic stagnation relative to current policies. The goal will be to
mitigate health risks, particularly among the most fragile sub-populations,
while also managing the deleterious effect of restrictions on economic
activity. The results of this paper show that a properly constructed sequential
release of age-defined subgroups from strict social distancing protocols can
lead to lower overall fatality rates than the simultaneous release of all
individuals after a lockdown. The optimal release policy, in terms of
minimizing overall death rate, must be sequential in nature, and it is
important to properly time each step of the staggered release. This model
allows for testing of various timing choices for staggered release policies,
which can provide insights that may be helpful in the design, testing, and
planning of disease management policies for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and
future outbreaks.
