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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and caused a serious threat to global public health. In Morocco, the first confirmed COVID-19 case was reported on March 2, 2020. Since then, several non-pharmaceutical interventions were used to slow down the spread of the disease. In this work, we use a previously developed multi-scale model of COVID-19 transmission dynamics to quantify the effects of restricting population movement and wearing face masks on disease spread in Morocco. In this model, individuals are represented as agents that move, become infected, transmit the disease, develop symptoms, go into quarantine, die by the disease, or become immunized. We describe the movement of agents using a social force model and we consider both modes of direct and indirect transmission. We use the model to simulate the impact of restricting the movement of the population movement and mandating the wearing of masks on the spread of COVID-19. The model predicts that adopting these two measures would reduce the total number of cases by 64%. Furthermore, the relative incidence of indirect transmission increases when control measures are adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2019, the first case of infection with a new virus COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), named coronavirus, was reported in the city of Wuhan, China. At that time, almost nobody paid any attention to it. The new pathogen, however, fast proved to be extremely infectious and dangerous, resulting in about 3–5% mortality. Over the few months that followed, coronavirus has spread over entire world. At the end of March, the total number of infections is fast approaching the psychological threshold of one million, resulting so far in tens of thousands of deaths. Due to the high number of lives already lost and the virus high potential for further spread, and due to its huge overall impact on the economies and societies, it is widely admitted that coronavirus poses the biggest challenge to the humanity after the second World war. The COVID-19 epidemic is provoking numerous questions at all levels. It also shows that modern society is extremely vulnerable and unprepared to such events. A wide scientific and public discussion becomes urgent. Some possible directions of this discussion are suggested in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]