The end of the social confinement in Spain and the COVID-19 re-emergence risk

Leonardo Lopez; Xavier Rodo

We simulated two different possible de-confinement strategies, namely the massive return of people to work on a given day and the gradual liberation of people from their confinement over a longer time interval. In the first strategy, the first case ( Figure 1 ) is the sudden de-confinement of 30% of the population back to work, therefore these people is immediately integrated into the susceptible population. The simulation is generated for 30, 45 and 60 days after the confinement began on March 13, corresponding to April 13, 29 and May 14, respectively. The second case (( Figure 2) ) is the sudden de-confinement of 40% of the protected population. As before, three different temporal scenarios (30, 45 and 60 days after the confinement of March 13 began) were again simulated for Spain, where 40% of all protected population is released. In the second strategy, instead, a gradual de-confinement rate is applied ( Figure 3 ). The daily de-confinement rate in the first case studied is set to be 50% higher than the confinement rate. Finally, a daily rate 30% higher than the confinement rate was also simulated ( Figure 4 ). The same three temporal scenarios are shown in these two latter situations (30, 45 and 60 days after the confinement began on March 13), but each of them is applied with the stated gradual de-confinement rates above.