COVID-19 spread, detection, and dynamics in Bogota, Colombia

Latin America has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but estimations of rates of infections are very limited and lack the level of detail required to guide policy decisions. We implemented a COVID-19 sentinel surveillance study with 59,770 RT-PCR tests on mostly asymptomatic individuals and combine this data with administrative records on all detected cases to capture the spread and dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bogota from June 2020 to early March 2021. We describe various features of the pandemic that appear to be specific to a middle income countries. We find that, by March 2021, slightly more than half of the population in Bogota has been infected, despite only a small fraction of this population being detected. The initial buildup of immunity contributed to the containment of the pandemic in the first and second waves. We also show that the share of the population infected by March 2021 varies widely by occupation, socio-economic stratum, and location. This, in turn, has affected the dynamics of the spread with different groups being infected in the two waves. Detailed information on SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in Latin America by occupation, socioeconomic group and geographic area are rarely available. Here, the authors provide these estimates for in Bogota, Colombia using data from a sentinel surveillance scheme, and find that over half the population had been infected by March 2021.

Automated summary

Latin America has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with limited estimations of infection rates available. A sentinel surveillance study in Bogota found that by March 2021, over half of the population had been infected, despite only a small fraction of cases being detected. This highlights the importance of detailed data in understanding the dynamics and impact of the pandemic.