Effectiveness of containment strategies in preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission

作者：Leung, Ka Kit; Zhang, Rusheng; Hashim, Muhammad Jawad; Fang, Mingying; Xu, Jing; Sun, Derek; Li, Xiang; Liu, Yanhui; Deng, Haohui; Zeng, Dingyuan; Lin, Zhong; He, Peiqing; Zhang, Yu; Zhu, Xuehong; Liang, Dachao; Xing, Abao; Lee, Shui-Shan; Memish, Ziad A.; Jiang, Guozhi; Khan, Gulfaraz^*

来源：Journal of Infection and Public Health, 2022, 15(6): 609-614.

DOI：10.1016/j.jiph.2022.04.012

• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• Containment strategies
• Lockdown
• Digital contact tracing
• Exposure history information management

Background: Despite substantial resources deployed to curb SARS-CoV-2 transmission, controlling the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major challenge. New variants of the virus are frequently emerging leading to new waves of infection and re-introduction of control measures. In this study, we assessed the effec-tiveness of containment strategies implemented in the early phase of the pandemic. Methods: Real-world data for COVID-19 cases was retrieved for the period Jan 1 to May 1, 2020 from a number of different sources, including PubMed, MEDLINE, Facebook, Epidemic Forecasting and Google Mobility Reports. We analyzed data for 18 countries/regions that deployed containment strategies such as travel restrictions, lockdowns, stay-at-home requests, school/public events closure, social distancing, and exposure history in-formation management (digital contact tracing, DCT). Primary outcome measure was the change in the number of new cases over 30 days before and after deployment of a control measure. We also compared the effec-tiveness of centralized versus decentralized DCT. Time series data for COVID-19 were analyzed using Mann-Kendall (M-K) trend tests to investigate the impact of these measures on changes in the number of new cases. The rate of change in the number of new cases was compared using M-K z-values and Sen's slope. Results: In spite of the widespread implementation of conventional strategies such as lockdowns, travel restrictions, social distancing, school closures, and stay-at-home requests, analysis revealed that these measures could not prevent the spread of the virus. However, countries which adopted DCT with cen-tralized data storage were more likely to contain the spread. Conclusions: Centralized DCT was more effective in containing the spread of COVID-19. Early im-plementation of centralized DCT should be considered in future outbreaks. However, challenges such as public acceptance, data security and privacy concerns will need to be addressed.

• 单位
  中山大学; 南方医科大学; 上海大学