Modelling non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate COVID-19 in Sao Paulo

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on multiple levels of society. Not only has the pandemic completely overwhelmed some health systems but it has also changed how scientific evidence is shared and increased the pace at which such evidence is published and consumed, by scientists, policymakers and the wider public. With very little experimental scientific evidence, predictive mathematical models have played an increasingly prominent role advising policymakers, even in low- and middle-income countries, such as Brazil. Through the COVID-19 Modelling (CoMo) Consortium, an international group of infectious disease modellers and public health experts collaborated to create a modelling interface that could help simulating the effect of different non-pharmaceutical interventions on mitigating the epidemic in numerous locations. Here, we describe how we adapted this modelling framework to the Brazilian context and, more specifically, to the city of Sao Paulo.