Avoid gatherings? Go out as little as possible? What measures really manage to lower the R0 factor, i.e. the average of how many people you can infect if you were infected and didn’t know it? Research published in The Lancet examined 131 countries around the world and then compiled a list.
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You’ve been two and a half months locked in the house, probably without even working. You have learned to always have a mask at your fingertips, knowing for the first time an object that until then had never been familiar to you. You don’t attend concerts anymore, you don’t go to the cinema anymore, you forgot the stadium. And above all you do not know when you will finally be able to hug a person who does not live with you, without being afraid of Covid-19. So now, faced with the second wave, there is a question we need to answer: which of these measures are really effective? A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases he drew up a sort of ranking, however, concluding that only by combining all the restrictions can concrete changes be achieved.
The result is that the one with the greatest impact appears to be the prohibition of gatherings and therefore the cancellation of public events. The R0 value, the “basic reproduction number”, is reduced by up to 29%. And it will be easy for you to understand how an infected person who does not know he is infected can infect many more people at a concert than in an office. On the contrary, it seems that the generic invitation not to go out it doesn’t help much to stop the pandemic, with a lowering of the R0 factor of only 3%. Keep in mind, however, that the poor result obtained by this measure depends a lot on how well it is respected.
The ban on gatherings and public events reduces the R0 factor by up to 29%
Between the two poles there are the schools. It has been said for months that their reopening would have produced an increase in infections and not only for the permanence of students in the classroom. The boys have to get on the vehicles all together, every day. And they meet outside the institute, perhaps forgetting to wear the mask and respect the distance. Everyday. In short, limiting this set of situations would lead to a 15% reduction in the contagion rate. Finally, the authors underline how respect for social distancing and wearing a mask can influence these percentages in a positive way.
These are pure calculations, which emerged from an analysis carried out in 131 countries. And the result you can imagine: the more restrictive the measures that are imposed, the less the virus circulates. Always remembering that the effects of these decisions are seen after two to three weeks which have been adopted.
But besides the numbers, there are other factors to consider. For example, the fact that school is a very important moment for the growth of a child and is not just a place where notions are transmitted. And that perhaps solutions can be found to limit the danger, such as the strengthening of means of transport to dilute the flow of people who have to take them. And then the economy and work, which are not reconciled with a total lockdown. Finally, people’s psyche: mental health is not always less important than physical health and it becomes necessary to find a compromise between the two.
I said at the beginning that we were locked in the house for two and a half months, but we also had the following five months for learn to organize and live with the virus. It is the responsibility of each of us and the ability of those who govern to understand how to prevent contagion, without putting everything else at risk.
Fonte| “The temporal association of introducing and lifting non-pharmaceutical interventions with the time-varying reproduction number (R) of SARS-CoV-2: a modelling study across 131 countries” pubblicato su The Lancet Infectious Diseases on 22 October 2020
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