Title
Lifting mobility restrictions and the effect of superspreading events on the short-term dynamics of COVID-19
Date Issued
01 January 2020
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Universidad de Sonora
Publisher(s)
American Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 has now infected 15 million people and produced more than six hundred thousand deaths around the world. Due to high transmission levels, many governments implemented social distancing and confinement measures with different levels of required compliance to mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic. In several countries, these measures were effective, and it was possible to flatten the epidemic curve and control it. In others, this objective was not or has not been achieved. In far too many cities around the world, rebounds of the epidemic are occurring or, in others, plateaulike states have appeared, where high incidence rates remain constant for relatively long periods of time. Nonetheless, faced with the challenge of urgent social need to reactivate their economies, many countries have decided to lift mitigation measures at times of high incidence. In this paper, we use a mathematical model to characterize the impact of short duration transmission events within the confinement period previous but close to the epidemic peak. The model also describes the possible consequences on the disease dynamics after mitigation measures are lifted. We use Mexico City as a case study. The results show that events of high mobility may produce either a later higher peak, a long plateau with relatively constant but high incidence or the same peak as in the original baseline epidemic curve, but with a post-peak interval of slower decay. Finally, we also show the importance of carefully timing the lifting of mitigation measures. If this occurs during a period of high incidence, then the disease transmission will rapidly increase, unless the effective contact rate keeps decreasing, which will be very difficult to achieve once the population is released.
Start page
6240
End page
6258
Volume
17
Issue
5
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Epidemiología
Políticas de salud, Servicios de salud
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85094871708
PubMed ID
Source
Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering
ISSN of the container
15471063
Sponsor(s)
Funding text
All authors acknowledge support from DGAPA-PAPIIT-UNAM grant IV100220 (convocatoria especial COVID-19). JXVH acknowledges support from grant PAPIIT-DGAP IN115720. We thank Dr. Héctor Benitez and Dr. William Lee Ardavín for their support and Ruth Corona-Moreno for her technical help. We also thank the Secretaría de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación of the Government of Mexico City for facilitating the data on the COVID-19 epidemic.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus