With the entry of effective vaccines for the COVID-19 virus, the end of this global health crisis is said to be on the horizon, although the virus keeps on spreading in the short term.
Timely new research that PLOS ONE published yesterday investigates the efficacy of control policies for COVID-19 in around 40 jurisdictions, which include countries and states in the United States.
Among the conclusions is that substantial social costs need to be sustained in order to lessen the growth of the said virus below zero.
In the majority of the jurisdictions investigated, policies that have lesser social effect, which includes cancellation of public events, limitations of get-togethers to less than 100 attendees, and recommendations to stay at home, are not adequate in themselves to mitigate COVID-19.
Socially-unbearable measures such as the stay-at-home guidelines, targeted or full place of work, as well as school closures, are necessitated, as well.
This study on COVID-19 control policies is authored by University Professor Anita McGahan, Organizations & Society at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy's Chair George Connel, and INSEAD assistant professors of strategy Wesley Wu-Yi Koo and Phebo Wibbens.
Model Used
The study investigators utilized a model for the generation of estimates of the marginal effect of each policy in a jurisdiction after they accounted for the general portfolio of policies implemented by jurisdiction, the levels at which such policies are enacted, the thoroughness of amenableness within the jurisdiction, the jurisdiction's infections of COVID-19, deaths from the virus, and excess mortalities, as well as the performance of "portfolio of policies in other jurisdictions."
According to EurekAlert, 11 classifications of COVID-19 control policies were evaluated, including the closing of schools, workplace shutdown, cancellation of public events, limitations on gatherings, stoppage of public transport, stay-at-home protocols, limitations on internal movement, controls in international trips, campaigns on public information, testing for the virus and contact tracing.
Changing Policies Assessed
Assessing the consequences of varying policies rely on accurate information on infections and mortalities. In addition, barriers to acquiring information about infections have been wide-ranging. They comprise inadequate kit supply, insensitivity of test, early underestimation of the test's essentiality, and asymptomatic patients' virus-shedding. These are those who do not report their own cases clinically.
The study also showed that deaths from COVID-19 had been underreported as well, resulting from "non-diagnosis, non-treatment and structural barriers."
Essentially, the framework on which the study authors' assessments are based engages Bayesian inference on historical events of infection inferred from both the virus deaths and excess deaths taking place several weeks successively.
The framework, as indicated in the study, is "tuned through simulations to achieve goodness-of-fit by jurisdiction." As earlier mentioned, it also utilizes worldwide information on case mortality rates, as well as infection-to-death records that are "nested probabilistically" in transmission's frameworks within jurisdictions.
Lastly, weekly record of COVID-19 infections, as well as mortalities by nation, as well as the US states, is taken from the "Johns Hopkins University COVID dashboard." More so, data on expected deaths each week is retrieved from the dataset coming from The Economist.
Check out more news and information on COVID-19 on Science Times.
