When the COVID-19 pandemics started, a group of IFAE researchers led a multidisciplinary effort integrated by members of the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED) and the Foundation for Advanced Digital Technologies (i2CAT).

The group obtained financial support from the PANDÈMIES 2020 program of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and granted access to anonymous health data of diagnosed patients, as well as vaccination data from Agència de Qualitat i Avaluació Sanitàries de Catalunya (AQuAS). Leveraging disaggregated socio-demographic microdata from census, mobile phone data and health data, including social determinants, age-specific strata, and mobility patterns, wthrthe group designed a comprehensive network model of Catalonia’s population and, through numerical simulation, assessed its response to the outbreak of COVID-19 over the two-year period 2020-21. Their findings underscore the critical importance of timely implementation of broad non-pharmaceutical measures and effective vaccination campaigns in curbing virus spread. The figure shows a comparison between simulated and real data for the Catalan population during 2020-2021.

An Agent-Based Simulation of COVID-19 History in Catalonia Using Extensive Real Datasets M. Bosman, Y. Cordon, M. Duran-Sala, L. Gabbanelli, C. García-Pérez, X. Jordan, M. Manera, P. Masjuan, A. Medina, Ll.M. Mir, A. Oròs, and V. Vitagliano