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

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

doi:10.7717/peerj.9446

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

PeerJ. 2020 Jun 25:8:e9446. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9446. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Núcleo de Pesquisas em Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
² Laboratório de Ecohealth, Ecologia de Insetos de Dossel e Sucessão Natural-ICEB, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil.
³ Laboratório de Fisiologia de Insetos Hematófagos-DEPAR, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
⁴ Laboratório da Ciência da Complexidade-Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
⁵ Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología AC, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
⁶ Laboratório de Imunopatologia-Departamento de Análises Clínicas-Escola de Farmácia, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
⁷ Laboratório de Biologia Molecular e Computacional de Fungos-Departamento de Microbiologia-ICB, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
⁸ Laboratório de Flavivírus, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
⁹ Laboratório de Genética Celular e Molecular-Departamento de Genética, Ecologia & Evolução-ICB, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
¹⁰ Laboratório de Epidemiologia e Citologia-Departamento de Análises Clínicas-Escola de Farmácia, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil.
¹¹ Departamento de Genética, Ecologia & Evolução/ICB, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: 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 the first occurrence of the virus coming from abroad.

Methodology: We 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.

Results: The 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.

Conclusions: We 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.

Keywords: Amazonia; Indigenous people; Metapopulation dynamics; One-Ecohealth; SARS-CoV-2 pandemic; SIR model.

Grants and funding

The CNPq agency guaranteed research grant scholarships for Sérvio Pontes Ribeiro, Alexandre Barbosa Reis, Aristóteles Góes-Neto, Luiz Carlos Junior Alcantara, Geraldo Wilson Fernandes and Vasco Ariston C Azevedo. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.