Im Jongho, Kim Jewoo, Choeh Joon Yeon
Department of Applied Statistics, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Department of Apparel, Events, and Hospitality Management, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
J Multidiscip Healthc. 2021 Mar 22;14:705-712. doi: 10.2147/JMDH.S303093. eCollection 2021.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted a global-scale public health response. Social distancing, along with intensive testing and contact tracing, has been considered an effective vehicle to reduce new infections. In this study, we aimed to estimate the effect of South Korean public health measures on behavioral changes with respect to social distancing without a nationwide lockdown. The results of this study may provide insights to countries who are planning to relax their aggressive restrictions though still having an unflattened curve of infections.
To estimate how the closure of educational and social welfare facilities and the disclosure of confirmed patients' contact history affected social distancing behaviors, we analyzed public transportation data in Seoul, Korea. For the modeling analysis, we used linear mixed-effects estimation.
Our estimation showed that the average daily number of bus passengers decreased by 21.8% in February 2020 as compared to the previous year with an additional decrease observed in the areas around educational and social welfare facilities. The highest drop in the daily number of passengers was observed in areas with religious facilities. We also found that individuals avoided areas that were proximate to or within the locations that constituted the confirmed patients' contact history.
Our results demonstrate that public health measures can lead people to practice social distancing. Among them, the measures that strongly encourage voluntary social distancing behaviors would play a critical role in suppressing the infections as it becomes increasingly difficult to continue imposing aggressive restrictions due to practical and economic reasons.
2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行促使全球采取公共卫生应对措施。社交距离措施，连同密集检测和接触者追踪，被认为是减少新感染的有效手段。在本研究中，我们旨在评估韩国公共卫生措施对在未实施全国范围封锁情况下社交距离方面行为变化的影响。本研究结果可能为那些计划放宽严格限制措施但感染曲线仍未平缓的国家提供见解。
为评估教育和社会福利设施关闭以及确诊患者接触史披露如何影响社交距离行为，我们分析了韩国首尔的公共交通数据。对于建模分析，我们使用线性混合效应估计。
我们的估计显示，与上一年相比，2020年2月公交车日均乘客数量下降了21.8%，在教育和社会福利设施周边地区下降更为明显。宗教设施所在地区的日均乘客数量下降幅度最大。我们还发现，人们会避开确诊患者接触史所涉及地点附近或范围内的区域。
我们的结果表明，公共卫生措施能够促使人们践行社交距离。其中，由于实际和经济原因，继续实施严格限制措施变得越来越困难，因此强烈鼓励自愿社交距离行为的措施在抑制感染方面将发挥关键作用。
