City, University of London, Northampton Square, EC1V 0HB, London, United Kingdom.
King's College London, 30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG, United Kingdom; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2022 Jan;292:114538. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114538. Epub 2021 Nov 12.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries introduced early evening curfews. Several studies try to measure the effectiveness of such measures across different countries, but disentangling competing effects can be elusive. We examined the impact of an early evening curfew on mobility by studying a shift in curfews from 9pm to 6pm in Greece using Google mobility data. We followed a difference-in-differences (DiD) econometric approach, where we compared trends in mobility in residential spaces as well as groceries and pharmacies, before and after the introduction of the 6pm curfew in Attica with trends in three other comparable Regions. We found little or no evidence of an effect of the early curfew on daily mobility relating to groceries and pharmacies, and that an 18.75% reduction in hours where people were allowed to leave home led to a relatively small increase in time spent in residential spaces. This less-than-proportionate reduction in mobility outside the household suggests a possibility that the curfew led to more people coinciding in indoor public spaces, such as grocery shops - which constitutes a contagion risk factor. Results should be treated with caution, especially with regards to the magnitude of any effect, as Google mobility data do not report the time of the day, so the time density of activities cannot be estimated. Lockdowns and other measures are necessary to tackle Covid-19, but it is important to avoid substitution by activities that contribute further to spreading the virus. Interventions should therefore be based on a thorough analysis of human behaviour.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，一些国家实行了傍晚宵禁。一些研究试图在不同国家衡量这些措施的有效性，但要理清相互竞争的影响可能很困难。我们使用谷歌的移动数据研究了希腊将宵禁时间从晚上 9 点提前到 6 点，以考察傍晚宵禁对移动性的影响。我们采用了双重差分（Difference-in-Differences，DiD）计量经济学方法，比较了引入雅典晚上 6 点宵禁前后，住宅区以及杂货店和药店的移动趋势，与其他三个可比地区的趋势进行了比较。我们几乎没有发现傍晚宵禁对杂货店和药店的日常移动性有任何影响的证据，而允许人们离家的时间减少 18.75%，导致在住宅区的时间相对增加。家庭以外的这种不成比例的移动性减少表明，宵禁可能导致更多的人同时在杂货店等室内公共场所活动——这构成了传染风险因素。结果应该谨慎对待，特别是关于任何影响的幅度，因为谷歌的移动数据没有报告一天中的时间，因此无法估计活动的时间密度。封锁和其他措施是应对新冠病毒的必要手段，但重要的是要避免被进一步传播病毒的活动所取代。因此，干预措施应该基于对人类行为的彻底分析。
