Covid-19

Predictions

Our aim is to provide a comprehensive picture of the pandemic situation of COVID-19 in the EU countries, and to be able to foresee the situation in the next coming days. We employ an empirical model, verified with the evolution of the number of confirmed cases in previous countries where the epidemic is close to conclude. The model does not pretend to interpret the causes of the evolution of the cases but to permit the evaluation of the quality of control measures made in each state and a short-term prediction of trends.

Mobility

Data about mobility and confinement degree provided by Facebook (Data for Good) allow for a tracking of people’s behaviour from the movement perspective. Facebook Data for Good(FB) tracks people remaining at home (FB short walk index) and also the number of different places that not-confined people visit compared with a pre-curfew baseline (FB mobility index). The analysis of this data provides a variable of interest for risk evaluation. An increase in mobility, or a decrease in confinement degree, entails an increase in social interactions that could eventually facilitate the spreading of a new outbreak (i.e., a secondary wave). Then, it is important to ensure a gradual increase in mobility that allows for a careful evaluation of resulting spreading rate. If a significant and persistent increase in spreading rate is observed, control measures should be hardened again in the affected regions or areas. We have evaluated how mobility and confinement degree has evolved in different countries and European regions.

Risk assessments

We propose different empirical indexes to estimate the state of the covid19 pandemics. These indexes quantify both the propagation and the number of estimated cases, allowing us to accurately determine the real risk of a particular country. We have calculated these indexes evolution for several European countries. Risk diagrams are introduced as a tool to visualize the evolution of a country and evaluate its current risk as a function of the number of contagious individuals and the empiric reproduction number. Risk diagrams at the regional level are useful to observe heterogeneity on covid19 penetration and spreading in some countries, which is essential during deconfinement process. During the pandemic there have been seen significant differences in countries reporting case criterion and detection capacity. Therefore, we have introduced estimations about the real number of infectious cases that allows us to have a broader view and to better estimate the risk.

Epidemiologic Monitoring

We follow the dynamics of the epidemic at different spatial scales, from the large scale of countries where data is typically available from the ECDC to smaller scales like regions and cities. We also consider and evaluate the propagation at local scale like schools or hospitals if it is possible. We discuss the distribution by gender or by age and the implications of such distributions.