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Interviewer: Dr. Leonardo Lopez, thank you very much for
taking the time to do this interview with us today to discuss
your recently published research in Nature regarding
the modeling of the current COVID-19 pandemic progression in Europe,
and the prediction of second waves of infections
which you have projected could easily take place,
which as it turns out,
is starting to take place at the moment across Europe.
Let me jump right in and first of all,
ask you about the type of modeling you did
and the questions you were initially trying to address with this research.
Prof. Lopez: Yes. The kind of model we carry out is what
in bibliography is normally known as compartmental or population-based model.
In this kind of model, the population under study,
this is like a country or an autonomous region,
a county, et cetera,
is divided into different compartments
that represent different epidemiological characteristics.
The best model that normally is used
the SEIR model where basically the population is divided in four categories.
On one hand, you have the susceptible population to the disease,
and this is the population that can be infected.
Then you have the exposed population to the pathogen,
that is the population that is exposed to the pathogen
and then enters to the incubation process.
The infectious population or infected,
this is the population that has the capacity of infecting others in the population.
