Since the beginning of the epidemic until March 25, the restrictions on mobility decided by the Italian government have avoided the hospitalization of at least 200,000 people and progressively reduced the contagion capacity by 45%. These are the results of a study accepted on April 10 and to be published in the prestigious scientific journal PNAS, created by a group of Italian scientists from the Polytechnic of Milan, Prof. Marino Gatto and Prof. Renato Casagrandi, with Ca 'Foscari University of Venice, University of Zurich, EPFL in Lausanne and University of Padua.

The researchers created the first contagion model for Italy that takes into account both the temporal evolution of the infection in local populations and their geographical distribution, integrating the movements of individuals to reach the workplace, with a resolution at the level provincial. They used Istat censuses to estimate mobility before the epidemic and an independent study that used mobile geolocation to understand how much mobility has reduced with the restrictions imposed. The resulting contagion map was then compared with the actual trend of the epidemic, finding a high accuracy of the mathematical model, which can therefore be used in the study of the next measures.

"The 200,000 hospitalizations that would have been necessary without restrictions would surely have exceeded the capacity of the hospitals. We can conclude that the very restrictive measures imposed since March 10, the effect of which we have been able to observe only partially in the analyzed period that ended on March 25, they are responsible for the drop in the infections we observe these days. " supports Marino Gatto, professor of Ecology at the Polytechnic of Milan and first author of the study.

The research titled "Spread and dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy: effects of emergency containment measures." is available here: tinyurl.com/ulcf4gs