Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a worldwide pandemic that has been affecting Portugal since 2 March 2020. The Portuguese government has been making efforts to contradict the exponential growth through lockdown, social distancing and the usage of masks. However, these measures have been implemented without controlling the compliance degree and how much is necessary to achieve an effective control. To address this issue, we developed a mathematical model to estimate the strength of Government-Imposed Measures (GIM) and predict the impact of the degree of compliance on the number of infected cases and peak of infection. We estimate the peak to be around 650 thousand infected cases with 53 thousand requiring hospital care by the beginning of May if no measures were taken. The model shows that the population compliance of the GIM was gradual between 30% to 75%, contributing to a significant reduction on the infection peak and mortality. Importantly, our simulations show that the infection burden could have been further reduced if the population followed the GIM immediately after their release on 18 March.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a worldwide pandemic that has been affecting Portugal since 2 March 2020
Basic transmission dynamics of COVID-19 was modelled using a simple mathematical model based on a system of two ordinary differential equations (ODE) developed for this purpose (Equation 1 and Equation 2)
We considered that these protective measures (GIM) were 97% effective based on recent meta-analysis estimates, accounted through model parameter β12
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a worldwide pandemic that has been affecting Portugal since 2 March 2020. The Portuguese government together with the National Health Directorate (DGS) declared a state of emergency and adopted interventive populational measures through Government-Imposed Measures (GIM) on 18 March 2020 in an attempt to drop the peak of infections even if at the cost of prolonging the infection time. These measures are based on the lockdown of people at home, social distancing and adopting protective antiseptic policies such as the usage of masks. Lockdown was implemented to assure compliance of the population, expect for people that maintain basic services such as medical and food distribution staff
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