Coronavirus disease 2019: The importance of social distancing

FERNANDO ANTONIO IGNACIO GONZÁLEZ

MEDICINA

Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirao Preto - U.S.P.

Lugar: Sao Paulo; Año: 2020 vol. 53 p. 223 - 233

0076-6046

The current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic poses a severe threat to people and the economy globally. The adoption of measures to reduce the speed of expansion of the pandemic is essential. This paper seeks to examine the potential impact of implementing social distancing measures. In particular, from a reduction in the reproduction rate (R0) its impact on the dynamics of infected and deceased is examined. The use of an extension of the standard SIR model is used, which explicitly considers those infected but not yet able to transmit the disease (exposed) and those who have died (deceased) and a decreasing rate of reproduction over time. This behavior of the reproduction rate would reflect the implementation of distance measurements based on different specifications. The results suggest that the distancing measures contribute to significantly reduce the maximum number of active infected and daily deceased. That is, they manage to flatten the contagion and lethality curves.