Key info


Date:
04 May 2020

Authors:
Michaela A. C. Vollmer, Swapnil Mishra, H Juliette T Unwin, Axel Gandy, Thomas A. Mellan, Valerie Bradley, Harrison Zhu, Helen Coupland, Iwona Hawryluk, Michael Hutchinson, Oliver Ratmann, Melodie Monod, Patrick Walker, Charlie Whittaker, Lorenzo Cattarino, Constance Ciavarella, Lucia Cilloni, Kylie Ainslie, Marc Baguelin, Sangeeta Bhatia, Adhiratha Boonyasiri, Nicholas Brazeau, Giovanni Charles, Laura V Cooper, Zulma Cucunuba, Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg, Amy Dighe, Bimandra Djaafara, Jeff Eaton, Sabine L van Elsland, Richard FitzJohn, Keith Fraser, Katy Gaythorpe, Will Green, Sarah Hayes, Natsuko Imai, Ben Jeffrey, Edward Knock, Daniel Laydon, John Lees, Tara Mangal, Andria Mousa, Gemma Nedjati-Gilani, Pierre Nouvellet, Daniela Olivera, Kris V Parag, Michael Pickles, Hayley A Thompson, Robert Verity, Caroline Walters, Haowei Wang, Yuanrong Wang, Oliver J Watson, Lilith Whittles, Xiaoyue Xi, Azra Ghani, Steven M Riley, Lucy Okell, Christl A. Donnelly, Neil M Ferguson1, Ilaria Dorigatti1, Seth Flaxman, Samir Bhatt1

1Correspondence:
neil.ferguson@imperial.ac.uk
i.dorigatti@imperial.ac.uk
s.bhatt@imperial.ac.uk

Download the full PDF for Report 20 (English) Download the full PDF for Report 20 (Italian) See all reports

WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics, Imperial College London

Summary

Italy was the first European country to experience sustained local transmission of COVID-19. As of 1st May 2020, the Italian health authorities reported 28,238 deaths nationally. To control the epidemic, the Italian government implemented a suite of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including school and university closures, social distancing and full lockdown involving banning of public gatherings and non essential movement. In this report, we model the effect of NPIs on transmission using data on average mobility. We estimate that the average reproduction number (a measure of transmission intensity) is currently below one for all Italian regions, and significantly so for the majority of the regions. Despite the large number of deaths, the proportion of population that has been infected by SARS-CoV-2 (the attack rate) is far from the herd immunity threshold in all Italian regions, with the highest attack rate observed in Lombardy (13.18% [10.66%-16.70%]). Italy is set to relax the currently implemented NPIs from 4th May 2020. Given the control achieved by NPIs, we consider three scenarios for the next 8 weeks: a scenario in which mobility remains the same as during the lockdown, a scenario in which mobility returns to pre-lockdown levels by 20%, and a scenario in which mobility returns to pre-lockdown levels by 40%. The scenarios explored assume that mobility is scaled evenly across all dimensions, that behaviour stays the same as before NPIs were implemented, that no pharmaceutical interventions are introduced, and it does not include transmission reduction from contact tracing, testing and the isolation of confirmed or suspected cases. Some of these factors, such as contact tracing, are likely to be introduced and will contribute to reductions in transmission; therefore our estimates should be viewed as pessimistic projections. We find that, in the absence of additional interventions, even a 20% return to pre-lockdown mobility could lead to a resurgence in the number of deaths far greater than experienced in the current wave in several regions. Future increases in the number of deaths will lag behind the increase in transmission intensity and so a second wave will not be immediately apparent from just monitoring of the daily number of deaths. Our results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 transmission as well as mobility should be closely monitored in the next weeks and months. To compensate for the increase in mobility that will occur due to the relaxation of the currently implemented NPIs, adherence to the recommended social distancing measures alongside enhanced community surveillance including swab testing, contact tracing and the early isolation of infections are of paramount importance to reduce the risk of resurgence in transmission. 

Translations

Contact us


For any enquiries related to the MRC Centre please contact:

Scientific Manager
Susannah Fisher
mrc.gida@imperial.ac.uk

External Relationships and Communications Manager
Dr Sabine van Elsland
s.van-elsland@imperial.ac.uk