COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdown: response time is more important than its strictness

Abstract

The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its threat to health systems worldwide have led governments to take acute actions to enforce social distancing. Previous studies used complex epidemiological models to quantify the effect of lockdown policies on infection rates. However, these rely on prior assumptions or on official regulations. Here, we use country-specific reports of daily mobility from people cellular usage to model social distancing. Our data-driven model enabled the extraction of mobility characteristics which were crossed with observed mortality rates to show that: (1) the time at which social distancing was initiated is of utmost importance and explains 62% of the number of deaths, while the lockdown strictness or its duration are not as informative; (2) a delay of 7.49 days in initiating social distancing would double the number of deaths; and (3) the expected time from infection to fatality is 25.75 days and significantly varies among countries.

Stringency of the containment measures in response to COVID-19 inversely correlates with the overall disease occurrence over the epidemic wave

“…The need for early adoption of containment measures was also demonstrated by Loewenthal et al who found strong correlation between the time at which containment measures were initiated and the number of deaths 27 . Based on their results, delay of 7.49 days in initiating containment measures would result in two-fold increase in the number of deaths.…”

Excess mortality across regions of Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic – impact of the winter holiday travelling and government responses

“…The results confirmed the importance of a timely response to the COVID-19 pandemic suggested by previous real-world studies. 12, 13, 19 Belgium, Sweden and UK stood out as the three countries in our study area that, according to our estimates, may have experienced lower excess mortality by intervening earlier. The slow response in Belgium may thus explain an important part of the excess mortality compared with its neighbouring country Netherlands.…”

What variables can better predict the number of infections and deaths worldwide by SARS-CoV-2? Variation through time

“…According to Loewenthal et al (2020), to reduce the number of deaths is essential to implement confinement policies at a very early stage. If social distancing is not adopted, death incidents are doubled every 7.49 days.…”

“…If social distancing is not adopted, death incidents are doubled every 7.49 days. 57 Piguillem et al Early detection of cases through surveillance and aggressive contact tracing around known cases has helped to contain spread of the outbreak in Singapore.…”

“…Lowental et al (2020) point in the same direction, countries that implemented early measures to limit population mixing limited the number of deaths, in this same study they explain that a delay of 7,49 days in initialling social distancing would double the number of deaths. 57 . For Papadopoulus et al (2020) early introduction of these policies are of greater importance than its stringency.…”