We have developed a probabilistic model to quantify the risks of COVID-19 explosion in Brazil, the epicenter of COVID-19 in Latin America. By explosion, we mean an excessive number of new infections that would overload the public health system. We made predictions from July 12th to Oct 10th, 2020 for various containment strategies, including business as usual, stay at home (SAH) for young and elderly, flight restrictions among regions, gradual resumption of business and the compulsory wearing of masks. They indicate that: if a SAH strategy were sustained, there would be a negligible risk of explosion and the public health system would not be overloaded. For the other containment strategies, the scenario that combines the gradual resumption of business with the mandatory wearing of masks would be the most effective, reducing risk to considerable category. Should this strategy is applied together with the investment in more Intensive Care Unit beds, risk could be reduced to negligible levels. A sensitivity analysis sustained that risks would be negligible if SAH measures were adopted thoroughly.
This study has developed a probabilistic epidemiological model a few weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID‐19 a pandemic (based on the little data available at that time). The aim was to assess relative risks for future scenarios and evaluate the effectiveness of different management actions for 1 year ahead. We quantified, categorized, and ranked the risks for scenarios such as business as usual, and moderate and strong mitigation. We estimated that, in the absence of interventions, COVID‐19 would have a 100% risk of explosion (i.e., more than 25% infections in the world population) and 34% (2.6 billion) of the world population would have been infected until the end of simulation. We analyzed the suitability of model scenarios by comparing actual values against estimated values for the first 6 weeks of the simulation period. The results proved to be more suitable with a business‐as‐usual scenario in Asia and moderate mitigation in the other continents. If everything went on like this, we would have 55% risk of explosion and 22% (1.7 billion) of the world population would have been infected. Strong mitigation actions in all continents could reduce these numbers to, 7% and 3% (223 million), respectively. Although the results were based on the data available in March 2020, both the model and probabilistic approach proved to be practicable and could be a basis for risk assessment in future pandemic episodes with unknown virus, especially in the early stages, when data and literature are scarce.
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