Possible fates of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Mexican context

Abstract

The determination of the adequate time for house confinement and when social distancing restrictions should end are now two of the main challenges that any country has to face in an ongoing battle against SARS-CoV-2. The possibility of a new outbreak of the pandemic and how to avoid it is, nowadays, one of the primary objectives of epidemiological research. In this work, we present an innovative compartmental model that explicitly introduces the number of active cases, and employ it as a conceptual tool to explore the possible fates of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Mexican context. We incorporated the impact of starting, inattention and end of restrictive social policies on the pandemic’s time evolution via time-dependent corrections to the infection rates. The magnitude and impact on the epidemic due to post-social restrictive policies are also studied. The scenarios generated by the model could help authorities determine an adequate time and population load that may be allowed to reassume normal activities.

Modeling the COVID-19 pandemic: a primer and overview of mathematical epidemiology

“…The effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions to control the epidemic has been an important aim of recent work [ 8 , 14 , 88 , 103 ]. The economic and social cost of lockdowns, bans of public events or closures of restaurants, commercial centers, etc., must be limited to reduce economic costs.…”

“…In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the scientific community has acted fast to better understand the epidemiological, biological, immunological, and virological aspects of the SARS-CoV-2. Mathematical models have played a significant role to support public health preparedness and response efforts against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic [ 2 – 6 , 19 , 21 , 23 , 30 , 32 – 34 , 39 , 50 , 55 , 68 , 84 , 86 , 88 , 89 , 91 ]. From the start of the pandemic, modelers have attempted to forecast the spread of COVID-19 in terms of the expected number of infections, deaths, hospital beds, intensive care units, and other health-care resources.…”

The trade-off between mobility and vaccination for COVID-19 control: a metapopulation modelling approach

“…Moreover, unlike previous COVID-19 epidemic models (e.g. [9,[13][14][15][16][17]) system (2.2) allows the possibility of reinfections. This is essential since it is not yet known how long natural immunity will last and there have been already confirmed cases of coronavirus reinfection [18].…”

Modeling the COVID-19 pandemic: A primer and overview of mathematical epidemiology

“…The effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions to control the epidemic has been an important aim of recent work [9,15,87,102]. The economic and social cost of lockdowns, bans of public events or closures of restaurants, commercial centers, etc., must be limited to reduce economic costs.…”

“…In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the scientific community has acted fast to better understand the epidemiological, biological, immunological, and virological aspects of the SARS-CoV-2. Mathematical models have played a significant role to support public health preparedness and response efforts against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic [3,4,5,6,7,20,22,24,25,32,34,35,36,41,51,56,66,83,85,87,88]. From the start of the pandemic, modelers have attempted to forecast the spread of COVID-19 in terms of the expected number of infections, deaths, hospital beds, intensive care units, and other health-care resources.…”