ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Spread and dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy: Effects of emergency containment measures.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 488 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
488 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Modelling the impact of behavioural interventions during pandemics: A systematic review.PloS one · 2025Pooled it
- Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission: rapid review of evidence from Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China.Frontiers in public health · 2024Pooled it
- The methodologies to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions during COVID-19: a systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Epidemiological modelling in refugee and internally displaced people settlements: challenges and ways forward.BMJ global health · 2022Pooled it
- Combining and comparing regional SARS-CoV-2 epidemic dynamics in Italy: Bayesian meta-analysis of compartmental models and global sensitivity analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Nudging epidemic policy compliance: experimental insights into message framing.Frontiers in public health · 2025Trial
- Minimizing Societal Cost of Epidemics: Optimal Catastrophe Insurance Compensation Allocation.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Redefining and estimating the early-phase reproduction ratio for epidemic outbreaks in spatially structured populations.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Mobility data resolution needed to inform predictive models of spatial epidemic spread from mobile phone data.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- In silico models in oncology, neurology, and epidemiology: systems-level and multiscale perspectives.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Review
- Networked SIRS model with Kalman filter state estimation for epidemic monitoring in Europe.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Efficient reporting delay calibration in spatial metapopulation models for reconstructing cross-regional epidemic dynamics.Biosafety and health · 2026Article
- A compartmental model of variant coexistence, dynamics and dominance in infectious diseases: Case for SARS-CoV-2 in Abu Dhabi.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- A Multi-Region SEIR Model Incorporating Inter-County Mobility and Time-Dependent Transmission Dynamics: Application to COVID-19 Disease Outbreak Data in North Carolina.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Epidemicity conditions in spatial models of infectious diseases.Bollettino della Unione matematica italiana (2008) · 2026Article
- Social, mobility and contact networks in shaping health behaviours and infectious disease dynamics: a scoping review.Infectious diseases of poverty · 2025Article
- Human mobility and sewage data correlate with COVID-19 epidemic evolution in a 3-year surveillance of the metropolitan area of Bologna.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Models for SARS-CoV-2 health policies: social distancing amid vaccination and virus variants.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- A Comparative Study on COVID-19 Dynamics: Mathematical Modeling, Predictions, and Resource Allocation Strategies in Romania, Italy, and Switzerland.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Epidemiological indices with multiple circulating pathogen strains.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
428 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Italy prompted drastic measures for transmission containment. We examine the effects of these interventions, based on modeling of the unfolding epidemic. We test modeling options of the spatially explicit type, suggested by the wave of infections spreading from the initial foci to the rest of Italy. We estimate parameters of a metacommunity Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR)-like transmission model that includes a network of 107 provinces connected by mobility at high resolution, and the critical contribution of presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission. We estimate a generalized reproduction number ([Formula: see text] = 3.60 [3.49 to 3.84]), the spectral radius of a suitable next-generation matrix that measures the potential spread in the absence of containment interventions. The model includes the implementation of progressive restrictions after the first case confirmed in Italy (February 21, 2020) and runs until March 25, 2020. We account for uncertainty in epidemiological reporting, and time dependence of human mobility matrices and awareness-dependent exposure probabilities. We draw scenarios of different containment measures and their impact. Results suggest that the sequence of restrictions posed to mobility and human-to-human interactions have reduced transmission by 45% (42 to 49%). Averted hospitalizations are measured by running scenarios obtained by selectively relaxing the imposed restrictions and total about 200,000 individuals (as of March 25, 2020). Although a number of assumptions need to be reexamined, like age structure in social mixing patterns and in the distribution of mobility, hospitalization, and fatality, we conclude that verifiable evidence exists to support the planning of emergency measures.
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