School closure, work from home, ban on public events — which works best to restrict Covid-19?

School closure, work from home, ban on public events — which works best to restrict Covid-19?

Introduction:

Restrictions put in place by various countries — school and office closure, ban on public events, travel restrictions etc — did help restrict the spread of Covid-19, but combined measures were more effective than any single restriction, a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases has found.

How they worked it out

The calculations are based on the R number — which indicates the number of healthy persons to whom an infected individual can transmit the virus within a population group
The researchers investigated the effect of separate and combined interventions on transmission, by estimating the R number when these interventions are introduced and lifted.

Single vs package

24% Bans on public events were found to cause the single highest reduction.
R dropped 24% within 28 days. Other measures were not found to have a significant effect on their own.
29% The team modelled four “packages” that combined a number of measures. The least restrictive of these — ban on public events, ban on gatherings of more than 10 — reduced R by 29% on day 28.
52% This was the reduction caused by a package of school and workplace closure, ban on public events and gatherings of more than ten people, limits on movement and a stay-at-home requirement.