Modeling the COVID-19 epidemic in Bolivia

Antonio N. Bojanic; Alejandro Jordán; Antonio N. Bojanic; Alejandro Jordán

doi:10.3934/bdia.2020004

Big Data and Information Analytics

2020, Volume 5, Issue 1: 47-57. doi: 10.3934/bdia.2020004

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Research article

Modeling the COVID-19 epidemic in Bolivia

Antonio N. Bojanic ^{1
,
,},
Alejandro Jordán ²

1.
Economics Department, Tulane University, 6823 St. Charles Ave., New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
2.
Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA

Received: 21 August 2020 Accepted: 15 October 2020 Published: 27 October 2020

The first cases of COVID-19 appeared in Bolivia on March 10. Since then and until September 24,132,618 people have been infected, 7765 have died, and 92,101 have recovered; the virus has spread throughout the country, but the departments of Santa Cruz, La Paz, and Cochabamba account for the overwhelming percentage of infected, recovered and dead. We analyze the spread of the virus utilizing a SIR model. We find that a maximum fraction of infected individuals occurs on June 17, when around 28% of the population is infected; when the epidemic begins to subside, 54% of the population is in the recovered category, indicating that more than half of the population will have been infected by COVID-19 during some period of the epidemic. There is an uptick in the number of susceptible individuals after July 1, highlighting that the relaxing of mitigation measures might have happened too soon.
- epidemics/epidemiology,
- COVID-19,
- Bolivia
Citation: Antonio N. Bojanic, Alejandro Jordán. Modeling the COVID-19 epidemic in Bolivia[J]. Big Data and Information Analytics, 2020, 5(1): 47-57. doi: 10.3934/bdia.2020004

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Abstract

The first cases of COVID-19 appeared in Bolivia on March 10. Since then and until September 24,132,618 people have been infected, 7765 have died, and 92,101 have recovered; the virus has spread throughout the country, but the departments of Santa Cruz, La Paz, and Cochabamba account for the overwhelming percentage of infected, recovered and dead. We analyze the spread of the virus utilizing a SIR model. We find that a maximum fraction of infected individuals occurs on June 17, when around 28% of the population is infected; when the epidemic begins to subside, 54% of the population is in the recovered category, indicating that more than half of the population will have been infected by COVID-19 during some period of the epidemic. There is an uptick in the number of susceptible individuals after July 1, highlighting that the relaxing of mitigation measures might have happened too soon.

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