The SARS-CoV-2 epidemic outbreak: a review of plausible scenarios of containment and mitigation for Mexico

Manuel Adrian Acuna-Zegarra; Andreu Comas-Garcia; Esteban Hernandez-Vargas; Mario Santana-Cibrian; Jorge X. Velasco-Hernandez

The incubation and infectious periods have been a most important issue in the present epidemic and estimates have varied as more information is available on the dynamics of the disease. We will use incubation period 1/γ = 6 days [3, [7] [8] [9] . The same situation occurs with the infectious period that we take 1/η = 10 days [7, 10, 11] . One of the first articles to calculate the basic reproduction number R 0 of the new coronavirus in Wuhan China, estimated (Jan 24, 2020) its value as 2.68(2.47 − 2.86) with an epidemic doubling time of 6.4 days (5.8 − 7.1) [3] . Other authors have estimated the basic reproductive number to be around 2.5, value that we use here for the Wuhan original outbreak but again there exist some variability and uncertainity in the different estimates [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] . In what follows some simple models are described related to three specific situations described above and occurring during this epidemic: disease dispersion due to long range population movement, behavioral change imposed on individuals as an strategy of containment, and the effect of social distancing on the general fate of the epidemic.