City Navigator Middle East NT 2020.10 - MENA.gm...

The reconstructions also reveal important differences in the inferred number of infections during March 2020, the month in which the virus was introduced in Chile by travelers from affluent municipalities. We analyzed the number of tests performed between 8 March and 9 April and find a significantly higher number of tests performed in municipalities with high SES (Fig. 2B), especially during the first 2 weeks of March (Fig. 2D). In addition, an early peak of reported cases was only observed in high-SES municipalities during the middle of March (Fig. 2C), even though several COVID-19 deaths, which are lagged with respect to infection by up to several weeks, were reported in low-SES municipalities during the same period. These findings suggest that an early first wave of infections occurred during March and quickly spread through the rest of the city without being captured by the official counts. Our RmMAP estimates at the municipality level support this claim, because they capture a high volume of early infections in most municipalities (Fig. 2E), a scenario that largely deviates from the official tallies (Fig. 2C).

City Navigator Middle East NT 2020.10 - MENA.gm...

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