Dataset Information

How did governmental interventions affect the spread of COVID-19 in European countries?

ABSTRACT:

Background

To reduce the transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in its first wave, European governments have implemented successive measures to encourage social distancing. However, it remained unclear how effectively measures reduced the spread of the virus. We examined how the effective-contact rate (ECR), the mean number of daily contacts for an infectious individual to transmit the virus, among European citizens evolved during this wave over the period with implemented measures, disregarding a priori information on governmental measures.

Methods

We developed a data-oriented approach that is based on an extended Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed (SEIR) model. Using the available data on the confirmed numbers of infections and hospitalizations, we first estimated the daily total number of infectious-, exposed- and susceptible individuals and subsequently estimated the ECR with an iterative Poisson regression model. We then compared change points in the daily ECRs to the moments of the governmental measures.

Results

The change points in the daily ECRs were found to align with the implementation of governmental interventions. At the end of the considered time-window, we found similar ECRs for Italy (0.29), Spain (0.24), and Germany (0.27), while the ECR in the Netherlands (0.34), Belgium (0.35) and the UK (0.37) were somewhat higher. The highest ECR was found for Sweden (0.45).

Conclusions

There seemed to be an immediate effect of banning events and closing schools, typically among the first measures taken by the governments. The effect of additionally closing bars and restaurants seemed limited. For most countries a somewhat delayed effect of the full lockdown was observed, and the ECR after a full lockdown was not necessarily lower than an ECR after (only) a gathering ban.

SUBMITTER: Post RAJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7908011 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundThe first half of 2020 has been marked as the era of COVID-19 pandemic which affected the world globally in almost every aspect of the daily life from societal to economical. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, countries have implemented diverse policies regarding Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (NPI) measures. This is because in the first stage countries had limited knowledge about the virus and its contagiousness. Also, there was no effective medication or vaccines. This paper studies the effectiveness of the implemented policies and measures against the deaths attributed to the virus between January and May 2020.MethodsData from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control regarding the identified cases and deaths of COVID-19 from 48 countries have been used. Additionally, data concerning the NPI measures related policies implemented by the 48 countries and the capacity of their health care systems was collected manually from their national gazettes and official institutes. Data mining, time series analysis, pattern detection, machine learning, clustering methods and visual analytics techniques have been applied to analyze the collected data and discover possible relationships between the implemented NPIs and COVID-19 spread and mortality. Further, we recorded and analyzed the responses of the countries against COVID-19 pandemic, mainly in urban areas which are over-populated and accordingly COVID-19 has the potential to spread easier among humans.ResultsThe data mining and clustering analysis of the collected data showed that the implementation of the NPI measures before the first death case seems to be very effective in controlling the spread of the disease. In other words, delaying the implementation of the NPI measures to after the first death case has practically little effect on limiting the spread of the disease. The success of implementing the NPI measures further depends on the way each government monitored their application. Countries with stricter policing of the measures seems to be more effective in controlling the transmission of the disease.ConclusionsThe conducted comparative data mining study provides insights regarding the correlation between the early implementation of the NPI measures and controlling COVID-19 contagiousness and mortality. We reported a number of useful observations that could be very helpful to the decision makers or epidemiologists regarding the rapid implementation and monitoring of the NPI measures in case of a future wave of COVID-19 or to deal with other unknown infectious pandemics. Regardless, after the first wave of COVID-19, most countries have decided to lift the restrictions and return to normal. This has resulted in a severe second wave in some countries, a situation which requires re-evaluating the whole process and inspiring lessons for the future.

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