The geography of COVID-19 spread in Italy and implications for the relaxation of confinement measures

Enrico Bertuzzo, Lorenzo Mari, Damiano Pasetto, Stefano Miccoli, Renato Casagrandi, Marino Gatto and Andrea Rinaldo ()
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Enrico Bertuzzo: Universitá Ca’ Foscari Venezia
Lorenzo Mari: Politecnico di Milano
Damiano Pasetto: Universitá Ca’ Foscari Venezia
Stefano Miccoli: Politecnico di Milano
Renato Casagrandi: Politecnico di Milano
Marino Gatto: Politecnico di Milano
Andrea Rinaldo: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract The pressing need to restart socioeconomic activities locked-down to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy must be coupled with effective methodologies to selectively relax containment measures. Here we employ a spatially explicit model, properly attentive to the role of inapparent infections, capable of: estimating the expected unfolding of the outbreak under continuous lockdown (baseline trajectory); assessing deviations from the baseline, should lockdown relaxations result in increased disease transmission; calculating the isolation effort required to prevent a resurgence of the outbreak. A 40% increase in effective transmission would yield a rebound of infections. A control effort capable of isolating daily ~5.5% of the exposed and highly infectious individuals proves necessary to maintain the epidemic curve onto the decreasing baseline trajectory. We finally provide an ex-post assessment based on the epidemiological data that became available after the initial analysis and estimate the actual disease transmission that occurred after weakening the lockdown.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18050-2

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