Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 17;17(6):e0269774. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269774. eCollection 2022.
As countries struggled with SARS-COV2 outbreaks at the beginning of 2021, many citizens found themselves in yet another period of increasing travel restrictions, if not a strict lockdown. At the same time there was concern that further restrictions would prove to be less effective due to a range of reasons including increasing pandemic fatigue or the lack of appropriate supports. In this study we investigate whether restrictions remained effective as a way to limit non-essential travel in order to curb virus transmission. We do this by analysing adherence during periods of increasing and decreasing restrictions in 125 countries during three different 4-month phases, early (March-June 2020), middle (July-October 2020), and late (November 2020-February 2021) over the course of the first year of the pandemic, and prior to significant population-wide vaccination. We use the strength of the relationship between restriction levels and the level of personal mobility associated with non-essential travel in order to determine the degree of adherence to the restrictions imposed. We show that there is evidence of a significant decrease in adherence to restrictions during the middle and late phases of the pandemic, compared with the early phase. Our analysis further suggests that this decrease in adherence is due to changes in mobility rather than changes in restrictions. We conclude, therefore, that restrictions have become less effective at curbing non-essential travel, which may alter the cost-benefit analysis of restrictions and lockdowns, thus highlighting the need for governments to reconsider large-scale restrictions as a containment strategy in the future, in favour of more focused or flexible mitigation approaches.
当各国在 2021 年初应对 SARS-COV2 疫情时，许多公民发现自己又处于旅行限制不断增加的时期，如果不是严格封锁的话。与此同时，人们担心由于一系列原因，包括越来越多的大流行疲劳或缺乏适当的支持，进一步的限制将证明效果不佳。在这项研究中，我们调查了限制措施作为限制非必要旅行以遏制病毒传播的手段是否仍然有效。我们通过分析在大流行第一年的三个不同的 4 个月阶段中，125 个国家在不断增加和减少限制期间的遵守情况来做到这一点，早期（2020 年 3 月至 6 月），中期（2020 年 7 月至 10 月）和后期（2020 年 11 月至 2 月），并且在广泛的人群接种疫苗之前。我们使用限制水平与非必要旅行相关的个人流动性之间的关系强度来确定对所施加限制的遵守程度。我们发现，与早期阶段相比，在大流行的中期和后期，对限制措施的遵守程度有明显下降的证据。我们的分析进一步表明，这种遵守程度的下降是由于流动性的变化而不是限制措施的变化所致。因此，我们得出结论，限制措施在遏制非必要旅行方面的效果已经降低，这可能会改变限制措施和封锁的成本效益分析，从而强调政府在未来需要重新考虑将大规模限制作为遏制策略，转而采取更有针对性或灵活的缓解措施。
