COVID-19: Projecting the impact in Rohingya refugee camps and beyond

Shaun A Truelove; Orit Abrahim; Chiara Altare; Andrew Azman; Paul B Spiegel

In all scenarios, we projected relatively slow growth at the beginning of an outbreak in this population ( Figure 1) , with limited numbers of infections and few, if any, hospitalizations and deaths during the first month (Table 2 ). However, this quickly changes once sufficient infections are in the population, with rapid increases and culmination of the outbreak within the year (Table 2, Figure 2 ). By the time the first hospitalization occurs, we expect 50 (95% CI, individuals to be infected in the population under the low scenario, assuming homogeneous probability of infection by age. This increases to 72 (95% CI, 2-289) and 141 (95% CI, 3-502) in the moderate and high scenarios, respectively. When the first hospitalization occurs, we expect the virus to have been circulating in this population for an average of 38, 30, and 23 days under the low, moderate, and high transmission scenarios, respectively.