Evaluation of the potential incidence of COVID-19 and effectiveness of contention measures in Spain: a data-driven approach

Abstract

Our society is currently experiencing an unprecedented challenge, managing and containing an outbreak of a new coronavirus disease known as COVID-19. While China - where the outbreak started - seems to have been able to contain the growth of the epidemic, different outbreaks are nowadays being detected in multiple countries. Much is currently unknown about the natural history of the disease, such as a possible asymptomatic spreading or the role of age in both the susceptibility and mortality of the disease. Nonetheless, authorities have to take action and implement contention measures, even if not everything is known. To facilitate this task, we have studied the effect of different containment strategies that can be put into effect. Our work specifically refers to the situation in Spain as of February 28th, 2020, where a few dozens of cases have been detected. We implemented an SEIR-metapopulation model that allows tracing explicitly the spatial spread of the disease through data-driven stochastic simulations. Our results are in line with the most recent recommendations from the World Health Organization, namely, that the best strategy is the early detection and isolation of individuals with symptoms, followed by interventions and public recommendations aimed at reducing the transmissibility of the disease, which although not efficacious for disease eradication, would produce as a second order effect a delay of several days in the raise of the number of infected cases.