{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0254826","title":"Transmission dynamics and forecasts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, March-December 2020","abstract":"Mexico has experienced one of the highest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world. A delayed implementation of social distancing interventions in late March 2020 and a phased reopening of the country in June 2020 has facilitated sustained disease transmission in the region. In this study we systematically generate and compare 30-day ahead forecasts using previously validated growth models based on mortality trends from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation for Mexico and Mexico City in near real-time. Moreover, we estimate reproduction numbers for SARS-CoV-2 based on the methods that rely on genomic data as well as case incidence data. Subsequently, functional data analysis techniques are utilized to analyze the shapes of COVID-19 growth rate curves at the state level to characterize the spatiotemporal transmission patterns of SARS-CoV-2. The early estimates of the reproduction number for Mexico were estimated between Rt ~1.1-1.3 from the genomic and case incidence data. Moreover, the mean estimate of Rt has fluctuated around ~1.0 from late July till end of September 2020. The spatial analysis characterizes the state-level dynamics of COVID-19 into four groups with distinct epidemic trajectories based on epidemic growth rates. Our results show that the sequential mortality forecasts from the GLM and Richards model predict a downward trend in the number of deaths for all thirteen forecast periods for Mexico and Mexico City. However, the sub-epidemic and IHME models perform better predicting a more realistic stable trajectory of COVID-19 mortality trends for the last three forecast periods (09/21-10/21, 09/28-10/27, 09/28-10/27) for Mexico and Mexico City. Our findings indicate that phenomenological models are useful tools for short-term epidemic forecasting albeit forecasts need to be interpreted with caution given the dynamic implementation and lifting of social distancing measures.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2021,"id":176554,"datarank":0.4636563680037475,"base_score":3.091042453358316,"endowment":3.091042453358316,"self_citation_contribution":0.4636563680037475,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.4636563680037475,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":21,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9168,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":4963,"name":"Juan M. Banda","orcid":"0000-0001-8499-824X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":37172,"name":"Pavel Skums","orcid":"0000-0003-4007-5624","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":560244,"name":"Sushma Dahal","orcid":"0000-0003-4991-3110","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719221,"name":"Carlos Castillo-Garsow","orcid":"0000-0001-8426-211X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292527,"name":"Baltazar Espinoza","orcid":"0000-0002-6280-3277","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719222,"name":"Noel G. Brizuela","orcid":"0000-0002-7294-6810","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719223,"name":"Roberto A. Saenz","orcid":"0000-0002-0723-2539","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":414630,"name":"Alexander Kirpich","orcid":"0000-0001-5486-0338","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":611830,"name":"Ruiyan Luo","orcid":"0000-0003-4365-1148","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":552763,"name":"Anuj Srivastava","orcid":"0000-0001-7406-0338","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719224,"name":"Humberto Gutiérrez Pulido","orcid":"0000-0003-1943-6712","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719225,"name":"Néstor García-Chan","orcid":"0000-0003-4700-8192","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":296933,"name":"Ana I. Bento","orcid":null,"position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719226,"name":"María Eugenia Jiménez-Corona","orcid":"0000-0002-3804-9761","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":15756,"name":"Gerardo Chowell","orcid":"0000-0003-2194-2251","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":270043,"name":"Amna Tariq","orcid":"0000-0003-2344-5398","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":69,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:47:23.605867Z","pmid":"34288969","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}