Fig. 8: Sensitivity analysis considering the impact of having the pandemic spread contained within localized pockets within the state of São Paulo on the progression of the disease estimated by our model and mitigation strategies optimization results for the worst-case scenario investigated in terms of the number of critical cases per day (ICU-PD).

Panel a considers having all cases recorded coming from 25, 50, or 75% of the states’ population (N_pop) and isolation has no direct impact in social distancing (SD) magnitude, as estimated by mobility data (100% SD). panel b considers isolation causes a decrease of 25% in the effect of SD on the disease’s transmission rate (75% SD). Panel c considers isolation causes a decrease of 50% in the impact of SD (50% SD). For a–c protection rate (α) was kept constant across all scenarios and all other model parameters optimized for each scenario and future values of social distancing and protection were chosen to stay at current levels. For comparison, they also show the scenario with no part of the population isolated (N_pop and 100% SD). Shaded regions show confidence intervals of 95%, considering the 2.5 and 97.5% quantiles of the distribution of n = 300 uniformly distributed 1% errors or perturbations to the model parameters. d Mitigation strategy optimization results for 50% isolation and 100% SD showing the impact of different strategies, in color, and the percentage ratio of the unsusceptible or protected people over the whole population (Protection), x-axis, on the total number of critical cases over the ICU threshold (ICU_E), y-axis, predicted till 25 December 2021. Red color indicates constant (Ct) SD strategy, green color indicates intermittent (Int) strategy, and blue color indicates a stepping (Step) down strategy, SD values are shown from 15 to 40% by the diameters of the circles.