COVID-19 most vulnerable Mexican cities lack the public health infrastructure to face the pandemic: a new temporally-explicit model

Wesley Dattilo; Alcides Castro e Silva; Roger Guevara; Ian MacGregor-Fors; Servio Pontes Ribeiro

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04. 10.20061192 doi: medRxiv preprint people infected over time. In the 15% social distancing scenario, we observed that the percentage of infected people rose, again quickly, between days 107 and 209, to a maximum peak in day 159, with an overall 17.7% of the population of the 50 focal cities be infected (10, 103, 144 infected people). For the 30% of social distancing scenario, we observed that the percentage of infected people in the 50 focal cities rose, less steeply, between days 153 and 276, to a maximum peak in day 220, with 11.4% of the population infected (6,692,639 infected people). Yet, we detected an impressive decrease in the rate of infection (i.e., flattening of the curve) in the 45% social distancing scenario. The percentage of infected people in the country in that last scenario would start to rise between days 284 and 436, to a maximum peak around day 375, with only 5.1% of the assessed population infected (3,039,553 infected people). According to our predictions, if no social distancing is assured, these cities together could add up to 13 million infected inhabitants with COVID-19 over the course of a year (Dataset S6). Thus, based on our model, we suggest that considerable efforts should be focused in these cities in order to control and monitor the spread of COVID-19. These cities have great potential to a large number of infected people and also could serve as a source of spread of the disease to other cities and regions of the country, and even playing a crucial role in further outbreaks of COVID-19.