Natural disasters and infectious diseases result in widespread disruption to human health and livelihood. At the scale of a global pandemic, the co-occurrence of natural disasters is inevitable. However, the impact of natural disasters on the spread of COVID-19 has not been extensively evaluated through epidemiological modelling. We create an agent-based epidemiology model based on COVID-19 clinical, epidemiological, and geographic data. We first model 35 scenarios with varying natural disaster timing and duration for a COVID-19 outbreak in a theoretical region. We then evaluate the potential effect of an eruption of Vesuvius volcano on the spread of COVID-19 in Campania, Italy. In a majority of cases, the occurrence of a natural disaster increases the number of disease related fatalities. For a natural disaster fifty days after infection onset, the median increase in fatalities is 2, 59, and 180% for a 2, 14, and 31-day long natural disaster respectively, when compared to the no natural disaster scenario. For the Campania case, the median increase in fatalities is 1.1 and 2.4 additional fatalities per 100,000 for eruptions on day 1 and 100 respectively, and 60.0 additional fatalities per 100,000 for an eruption close to the peak in infections (day 50). Our results show that the occurrence of a natural disaster in most cases leads to an increase in infection related fatalities, with wide variance in possible outcomes depending on the timing of the natural disaster relative to the peak in infections and the duration of the natural disaster.

中文翻译：

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自然灾害对 COVID-19 传播的影响：基于代理的地理空间流行病学模型


自然灾害和传染病对人类健康和生计造成广泛破坏。在全球大流行的规模下，自然灾害的同时发生是不可避免的。然而，自然灾害对 COVID-19 传播的影响尚未通过流行病学模型得到广泛评估。我们根据 COVID-19 临床、流行病学和地理数据创建了一个基于代理的流行病学模型。我们首先对理论区域内 COVID-19 爆发的 35 种不同自然灾害发生时间和持续时间的情景进行建模。然后，我们评估了维苏威火山喷发对意大利坎帕尼亚 COVID-19 传播的潜在影响。在大多数情况下，自然灾害的发生会增加与疾病相关的死亡人数。对于感染发生 50 天后的自然灾害，与没有自然灾害的情况相比，持续 2 天、14 天和 31 天的自然灾害的死亡人数中位数分别增加了 2%、59% 和 180%。对于坎帕尼亚案例，在第 1 天和第 100 天的火山喷发中，死亡人数中位数分别增加为每 10 万人增加 1.1 人和 2.4 人，在接近感染高峰（第 50 天）的火山喷发中，每 10 万人会增加 60 人死亡。我们的研究结果表明，在大多数情况下，自然灾害的发生会导致与感染相关的死亡人数增加，根据自然灾害相对于感染高峰的时间和自然灾害的持续时间，可能的结果存在很大差异。