Mitigation of COVID-19 using social distancing of the elderly in Brazil: The vertical quarantine effects in hospitalizations and deaths

Summary Governments and epidemiologists have been proposing several mitigation strategies based on non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. In this work, we quantitatively compare the effects of elderly population (60 years old or more) selective isolation with a no isolation scenario using an adapted Susceptible - Exposed - Infectious - Removed (SEIR) compartmental model. For these simulated scenarios, we estimate the number of hospitalizations and deaths for different Brazilian cities, including those due to the lack of hospital beds. Our simulations show that, for São Paulo City, the isolation of the elderly would reduce demand for hospital beds by 9% and deaths by 16% compared to the no intervention scenario. Other Brazilian cities follow the same pattern, with median reductions of deaths ranging from 12-18%. We conclude that the social distancing of the elderly would be marginally effective and would not avoid health system collapse in several Brazilian cities.