Approaches to the exploration of scenarios in infectious disease dynamics: Dengue and COVID-19

Abstract

Infectious diseases are caused by organisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites, or fungi, and can be transmitted from one person to another or by vectors. These diseases have caused epidemics and pandemics throughout history and in our own time. For example, the Spanish flu of 1918 is considered the worst pandemic that affected 500 million people, and it has been estimated between 17 and 50 million deaths worldwide. Malaria is still an endemic disease in many African countries, but it has significantly decreased its mortality rate since 2000. Dengue is another endemic disease in more than 100 countries around the world, with the highest number of cases reported in 2019; particularly, more than 3.1 million dengue cases were reported in the Americas region during that year. Currently, up to this document writing date, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected more than 100 million people worldwide and has caused the death of 2.2 million approximately.