Towards fair social distancing in Santiago de Chile: Assessing association of socioeconomic factors with COVID-19 lockdown duration

Abstract

Staged closure and reopening (SCR) lockdowns were implemented in the Santiago Metropolitan Region to slow down COVID-19, at the cost of further exacerbating socioeconomic deprivation. Despite this overarching truth, little is still known about the contribution of disaggregated socioeconomic factors in the severity of the SCR as the outbreak evolved, and how to reduce severity during future lockdowns. This paper uses survival analysis to assess the association between socioeconomic factors and the hazard of reopening or lifting lockdowns in metropolitan regions of Santiago de Chile. When tested in independent Cox proportional hazard models, we found that educational attainment, domestic violence, and income poverty were significant predictors of longer lockdowns. Neither income poverty nor domestic violence is associated with average incidence during the staged lockdowns, highlighting their direct significance in lockdown duration. Beyond the provision of income subsidies, our results point out specific areas of intervention for fair social distancing: Domestic violence should be addressed as part of the lockdown plans with interventions that increase the social support and self-esteem of both victims and perpetrators.