Derivation of the effective reproduction number ℛ for COVID-19 in relation to mobility restrictions and confinement

  1. Alex Arenas
  2. Wesley Cota
  3. Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes
  4. Sergio Gómez
  5. Clara Granell
  6. Joan T. Matamalas
  7. David Soriano-Paños
  8. Benjamin Steinegger

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Abstract

The spread of COVID-19 is posing an unprecedented threat to health systems worldwide 1 . The fast propagation of the disease combined with the existence of covert contagions by asymptomatic individuals make the controlling of this disease particularly challenging. The key parameter to track the progression of the epidemics is the effective reproduction number ℛ, defined as the number of secondary infections generated by an infected individual 2 . The suppression of the epidemics is directly related to this value, and is attained when ℛ < 1. Here, we find an analytical expression for ℛ as a function of mobility restrictions and confinement measures, using an epidemic model tailored for COVID-19. This expression for ℛ is an extremely useful tool to design containment policies that are able to suppress the epidemics. We applied our epidemic model for the case of Spain, successfully forecasting both the observed incidence in each region and the overload of the health system. The expression for ℛ allowed us to determine the precise reduction of mobility κ 0 needed to bend the curve of epidemic incidence, which turned out to be κ 0 ∼ 0.7. This value, for the case of Spain, translates to a total lockdown with the exception of the mobility associated to essential services, a policy that was finally enforced on March 28.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.06.20054320: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.06.20054320 on medRxiv