COVID-19 spreading under containment actions

We propose an epidemiological model that explores the effect of human mobility on the spatio-temporal dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak, in the spirit to those considered in Refs. Barmak et al. (2011, 2016) and Medus and Dorso (2011) [1]. We assume that people move around in a city of 120 x 120 blocks with 300 inhabitants in each block. The mobility pattern is associated to a complex network in which nodes represent blocks while the links represent the traveling path of the individuals (see below). We implemented three confinement strategies in order to mitigate the disease spreading: (1) global confinement, (2) partial restriction to mobility, and (3) localized confinement. In the first case, it was observed that a global isolation policy prevents the massive outbreak of the disease. In the second case, a partial restriction to mobility could lead to a massive contagion if this was not complemented with sanitary measures such as the use of masks and social distancing. Finally, a local isolation policy was proposed, conditioned to the health status of each block. It was observed that this mitigation strategy was able to contain and even reduce the outbreak of the disease by intervening in specific regions of the city according to their level of contagion. It was also observed that this strategy is capable of controlling the epidemic in the case that a certain proportion of those infected are asymptomatic. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study presents an epidemiological model that examines the impact of human mobility on the dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak, proposing global confinement, partial restriction to mobility, and localized confinement as strategies to mitigate disease spread. It was observed that localized isolation policies based on the health status of each block were effective in containing and reducing the outbreak in specific regions of the city.