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Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration

Testing and isolation have been crucial for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Venezuela has one of the weakest testing infrastructures in Latin America and the low number of reported cases in the country has been attributed to substantial underreporting. However, the Venezuelan epidemic seems to ha...

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Autores principales: Lampo, Margarita, Hernández-Villena, Juan V., Cascante, Jaime, Vincenti-González, María F., Forero-Peña, David A., Segovia, Maikell J., Hampson, Katie, Castro, Julio, Grillet, Maria Eugenia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8310363/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34358135
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9070719
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author Lampo, Margarita
Hernández-Villena, Juan V.
Cascante, Jaime
Vincenti-González, María F.
Forero-Peña, David A.
Segovia, Maikell J.
Hampson, Katie
Castro, Julio
Grillet, Maria Eugenia
author_facet Lampo, Margarita
Hernández-Villena, Juan V.
Cascante, Jaime
Vincenti-González, María F.
Forero-Peña, David A.
Segovia, Maikell J.
Hampson, Katie
Castro, Julio
Grillet, Maria Eugenia
author_sort Lampo, Margarita
collection PubMed
description Testing and isolation have been crucial for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Venezuela has one of the weakest testing infrastructures in Latin America and the low number of reported cases in the country has been attributed to substantial underreporting. However, the Venezuelan epidemic seems to have lagged behind other countries in the region, with most cases occurring within the capital region and four border states. Here, we describe the spatial epidemiology of COVID-19 in Venezuela and its relation to the population mobility, migration patterns, non-pharmaceutical interventions and fuel availability that impact population movement. Using a metapopulation model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics, we explore how movement patterns could have driven the observed distribution of cases. Low within-country connectivity most likely delayed the onset of the epidemic in most states, except for those bordering Colombia and Brazil, where high immigration seeded outbreaks. NPIs slowed early epidemic growth and subsequent fuel shortages appeared to be responsible for limiting the spread of COVID-19 across the country.
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spelling pubmed-83103632021-07-25 Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration Lampo, Margarita Hernández-Villena, Juan V. Cascante, Jaime Vincenti-González, María F. Forero-Peña, David A. Segovia, Maikell J. Hampson, Katie Castro, Julio Grillet, Maria Eugenia Vaccines (Basel) Article Testing and isolation have been crucial for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Venezuela has one of the weakest testing infrastructures in Latin America and the low number of reported cases in the country has been attributed to substantial underreporting. However, the Venezuelan epidemic seems to have lagged behind other countries in the region, with most cases occurring within the capital region and four border states. Here, we describe the spatial epidemiology of COVID-19 in Venezuela and its relation to the population mobility, migration patterns, non-pharmaceutical interventions and fuel availability that impact population movement. Using a metapopulation model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics, we explore how movement patterns could have driven the observed distribution of cases. Low within-country connectivity most likely delayed the onset of the epidemic in most states, except for those bordering Colombia and Brazil, where high immigration seeded outbreaks. NPIs slowed early epidemic growth and subsequent fuel shortages appeared to be responsible for limiting the spread of COVID-19 across the country. MDPI 2021-07-01 /pmc/articles/PMC8310363/ /pubmed/34358135 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9070719 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lampo, Margarita
Hernández-Villena, Juan V.
Cascante, Jaime
Vincenti-González, María F.
Forero-Peña, David A.
Segovia, Maikell J.
Hampson, Katie
Castro, Julio
Grillet, Maria Eugenia
Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration
title Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration
title_full Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration
title_fullStr Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration
title_full_unstemmed Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration
title_short Signatures of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis in the First Wave of COVID-19: Fuel Shortages and Border Migration
title_sort signatures of the venezuelan humanitarian crisis in the first wave of covid-19: fuel shortages and border migration
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8310363/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34358135
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9070719
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