Data-Driven Study of the the COVID-19 Pandemic via Age-Structured Modelling and Prediction of the Health System Failure in Brazil amid Diverse Intervention Strategies

Askery Canabarro; Elayne Tenorio; Renato Martins; Lais Martins; Samurai Brito; Rafael Chaves

It is worth mentioning that all of these measures have direct social-economical and ethical implications because it severely reduces individual freedoms, spontaneous social aggregations, interferes in the outflow of industrial products and commodities and so on. However, we deal with a epidemiological model, not capable of inferring the by-product of the NPIs over the overall well-being of the population. Therefore, it is virtually impossible for governments simultaneously to minimize the socialeconomical impact of COVID-19 pandemic and protect the health system, which means minimising deaths. The case of China indicates that in practice some NPIs (quaratine, social distancing, isolation of infected individuals) can contain the virus spread [6] , but as soon as the measures are relaxed another outbreak can take place [23] possibly triggered by imported cases, meaning that, probably, NPIs are necessary from time to time. As we will see, our model predicts that for the Brazilian scenario, only intense quarantine (essentially a combination of NPIs) can prevent the collapse of the health system and consequently save a larger number of lives.