Severe airport sanitarian control could slow down the spreading of COVID-19 pandemics in Brazil.

Sérvio Pontes Ribeiro,Wesley Dáttilo,Vasco Ariston C Azevedo,Geraldo Wilson Fernandes,Aristóteles Góes-Neto,Marta Giovanetti,Wendel Coura-Vital,Luiz Carlos Junior Alcantara,Alcides Castro E Silva,Alexandre Barbosa Reis

doi:10.7717/peerj.9446

Abstract

BackgroundWe investigated a likely scenario of COVID-19 spreading in Brazil through the complex airport network of the country, for the 90 days after the first national occurrence of the disease. After the confirmation of the first imported cases, the lack of a proper airport entrance control resulted in the infection spreading in a manner directly proportional to the amount of flights reaching each city, following the first occurrence of the virus coming from abroad.MethodologyWe developed a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model divided in a metapopulation structure, where cities with airports were demes connected by the number of flights. Subsequently, we further explored the role of the Manaus airport for a rapid entrance of the pandemic into indigenous territories situated in remote places of the Amazon region.ResultsThe expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus between cities was fast, directly proportional to the city closeness centrality within the Brazilian air transportation network. There was a clear pattern in the expansion of the pandemic, with a stiff exponential expansion of cases for all the cities. The more a city showed closeness centrality, the greater was its vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2.ConclusionsWe discussed the weak pandemic control performance of Brazil in comparison with other tropical, developing countries, namely India and Nigeria. Finally, we proposed measures for containing virus spreading taking into consideration the scenario of high poverty.

Highlights

In the last few weeks, the new disease COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly around the world mainly due to stealth transmission, which started in China at the end of 2019.Large continental countries are likely to be very vulnerable to the occurrence of pandemics (Morse et al 2012)
We showed how SARS-CoV-2 spreads into the Brazilian cities by the international airports, and to other, less internationally connected cities, through the Brazilian airport network
The followup monitoring of suspicious individuals and their living network should be reinforced as a national strategy to prevent a large territory to be taken over by a pandemic in a short period of time

Summary

Introduction

In the last few weeks, the new disease COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly around the world mainly due to stealth transmission, which started in China at the end of 2019.Large continental countries are likely to be very vulnerable to the occurrence of pandemics (Morse et al 2012). We investigated a likely scenario of COVID-19 spreading in Brazil through the complex airport network of the country, for the 90 days after the first national occurrence of the disease. After the confirmation of the first imported cases, the lack of a proper airport entrance control resulted in the infection spreading in a manner directly proportional to the amount of flights reaching each city, following first occurrence of the virus coming from abroad

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion