Fig 1.
The effect of altitude on the incidence of COVID-19 in the American continent.
Epidemiological data were retrieved on May 23. Data on population density were extracted from the dataset created by CIESIN [22] or the corresponding country’s national statistics institute on May 23. Data were normalized by the population density of the same location and summed in intervals of 100 m of elevation. Raw, normalized, and adjusted data are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12685478. a) Correlation between altitude and the number of positive COVID-19 cases in the American continent grouped in intervals of 100 meters. b) Altitudinal distribution of the of COVID-19 positive cases in the American continent (not grouped by altitude intervals). c) Correlation between altitude and the number of positive COVID-19 cases reported below 1,000 m in the American continent. d) Correlation between altitude and the number of positive COVID-19 cases reported above 1,000 m in the American continent.
Fig 2.
Geographic and altitudinal distribution COVID-19 in a) North America, b) Central America and c) South America.
Red circles represent COVID-19 positive cases; the radius of the circle is relative to the normalized number of cases (cases/population density) in the location. The geographical coordinates and epidemiological data were retrieved on May 23, 2020 as described in the methods section. The final database used to produce these maps is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12685478. Maps for the 23 studied countries are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12685664.v1.
Table 1.
Correlation between the altitude and the incidence of COVID-19 in American countries.
Fig 3.
Effect of the probability of transmission of the disease in the epidemiological pattern of COVID-19 in lowlands and highlands in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
In these countries, strict early quarantines were applied and daily epidemiological data at state/province/departamento were available by May 23, 2020. For each country, the black lines show the observed cases. The red dotted lines represent the modeled data using the optimal value of “probability of transmission” estimated for highland populations. The blue dotted lines represent the modeled data using the optimal value of “probability of transmission” for lowland populations. Percentage values are the “probability of transmission” values used for calculating the line of the same color.
Table 2.
COVID-19 probability of transmission and basic reproduction numbers (R0) for highland and lowland populations.
Table 3.
Percentage of recovered and death rates in COVID-19 patients.
Table 4.
Estimated percentage of undiagnosed COVID-19 cases in five American countries.