Vertical social distancing policy is ineffective to contain the COVID-19 pandemic
| Autor: | Max Sousa de Lima, Luiz Henrique Duczmal, Ricardo H. C. Takahashi, Ivair R. Silva, Flávia Costa Oliveira Magalhães, Claudia Regina Lindgren Alves, Alexandre Almeida, Denise Bulgarelli Duczmal |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Distancing
Control (management) Pneumonia Viral lcsh:Medicine 01 natural sciences 010305 fluids & plasmas Social group 03 medical and health sciences Intervention (counseling) 0103 physical sciences Pandemic medicine Humans Sociology Social isolation Pandemics Health policy 030505 public health Models Statistical Social distance lcsh:Public aspects of medicine lcsh:R Public Health Environmental and Occupational Health COVID-19 lcsh:RA1-1270 distancia social modelos epidemiológicos Social Isolation Communicable Disease Control Quarantine medicine.symptom 0305 other medical science Coronavirus Infections Social psychology |
| Zdroj: | Cadernos de Saúde Pública, Vol 36, Iss 5 |
| ISSN: | 1678-4464 |
| Popis: | Considering numerical simulations, this study shows that the so-called vertical social distancing health policy is ineffective to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. We present the SEIR-Net model, for a network of social group interactions, as a development of the classic mathematical model of SEIR epidemics (Susceptible-Exposed-Infected (symptomatic and asymptomatic)-Removed). In the SEIR-Net model, we can simulate social contacts between groups divided by age groups and analyze different strategies of social distancing. In the vertical distancing policy, only older people are distanced, whereas in the horizontal distancing policy all age groups adhere to social distancing. These two scenarios are compared to a control scenario in which no intervention is made to distance people. The vertical distancing scenario is almost as bad as the control, both in terms of people infected and in the acceleration of cases. On the other hand, horizontal distancing, if applied with the same intensity in all age groups, significantly reduces the total infected people “flattening the disease growth curve”. Our analysis considers the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, but similar conclusions apply to other cities as well. Code implementation of the model in R-language is provided in the supplementary material. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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