• Open Access

Outbreak diversity in epidemic waves propagating through distinct geographical scales

Guilherme S. Costa, Wesley Cota, and Silvio C. Ferreira
Phys. Rev. Research 2, 043306 – Published 2 December 2020
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Abstract

A central feature of an emerging infectious disease in a pandemic scenario is the spread through geographical scales and the impacts on different locations according to the adopted mitigation protocols. We investigated a stochastic epidemic model with the metapopulation approach in which patches represent municipalities. Contagion follows a stochastic compartmental model for municipalities; the latter, in turn, interact with each other through recurrent mobility. As a case of study, we consider the epidemic of COVID-19 in Brazil performing data-driven simulations. Properties of the simulated epidemic curves have very broad distributions across different geographical locations and scales, from states, passing through intermediate and immediate regions down to municipality levels. Correlations between delay of the epidemic outbreak and distance from the respective capital cities were predicted to be strong in several states and weak in others, signaling influences of multiple epidemic foci propagating toward the inland cities. Responses of different regions to the same mitigation protocol can vary enormously, implying that the policies of combating the epidemics must be engineered according to the region's specificity but integrated with the overall situation. Real series of reported cases confirm the qualitative scenarios predicted in simulations. Even though we restricted our study to Brazil, the prospects and model can be extended to other geographical organizations with heterogeneous demographic distributions.

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  • Received 16 June 2020
  • Accepted 2 November 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.043306

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

NetworksNonlinear DynamicsInterdisciplinary PhysicsPhysics of Living Systems

Authors & Affiliations

Guilherme S. Costa1, Wesley Cota1, and Silvio C. Ferreira1,2

  • 1Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, 36570-900 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil
  • 2National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, 22290-180, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Issue

Vol. 2, Iss. 4 — December - December 2020

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