A modified SEIR model to predict the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain: simulating control scenarios and multi-scale epidemics

Leonardo R Lopez; Xavier Rodo

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.27.20045005 doi: medRxiv preprint contact assumption in the aggregated model estimates. Gaining extra time for exerting alternative interventions, such as temporary increases in public health responses, or increasing the capacity of massively screening the population in order to gain an accurate value of the real prevalence of SARS-CoV-2, or to develop disease treatment strategies seem a logical conclusion. While two of the most populated CCAA (namely Catalunya with roughly 7.7M people and Madrid Community, with 6.7M people) are already in the lead in terms of epidemic progression, other similarly populated regions lag only a few days entering a similar slope in their respective epidemic growths. The largest population density in Madrid compared to other CCAA together with its more advanced epidemic progression cast urgent attention on the evolution of this highly active epidemic focus. Those regions where the outbreak was initiated earlier (e.g. Madrid, Catalunya, Euskadi and Navarra) or appear to have more connectivity to the initial foci and largest population density tend to show earlier peaks. Those regions yet on early stages of the exponential increase are those where strong initial social isolation measures (therefore protection of the population), would have largest effects in resulting infected ( Figure 2 ).