Open AccessEffects of population mobility on the COVID-19 spread in Brazil
Author(s) -
Eduarda T. C. Chagas,
Pedro H. Barros,
Isadora Cardoso-Pereira,
Igor V. Ponte,
Pablo Ximenes,
Flávio Figueiredo,
Fabrício Murai,
Ana Paula Couto da Silva,
Jussara M. Almeida,
Antônio A. F. Loureiro,
Heitor S. Ramos
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0260610
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , pandemic , covid-19 , the internet , population , geographic mobility , business , public policy , action (physics) , work (physics) , computer science , public economics , computer security , economics , environmental health , economic growth , engineering , physics , medicine , world wide web , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , quantum mechanics
This article proposes a study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread and the efficacy of public policies in Brazil. Using both aggregated (from large Internet companies) and fine-grained (from Departments of Motor Vehicles) mobility data sources, our work sheds light on the effect of mobility on the pandemic situation in the Brazilian territory. Our main contribution is to show how mobility data, particularly fine-grained ones, can offer valuable insights into virus propagation. For this, we propose a modification in the SENUR model to add mobility information, evaluating different data availability scenarios (different information granularities), and finally, we carry out simulations to evaluate possible public policies. In particular, we conduct a case study that shows, through simulations of hypothetical scenarios, that the contagion curve in several Brazilian cities could have been milder if the government had imposed mobility restrictions soon after reporting the first case. Our results also show that if the government had not taken any action and the only safety measure taken was the population’s voluntary isolation (out of fear), the time until the contagion peak for the first wave would have been postponed, but its value would more than double.