Leo González Pérez
11/18/2020 4:47 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 11/18/2020 4:47 PM
A team of researchers from the University of Vienna, Austria, analyzed the relative effectiveness of a large number of measures that were implemented in different countries of the world to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and found that some "non-pharmaceutical interventions" were not very disruptive and of Low cost of instrumentation
can be as effective or more than the most intrusive and drastic
, such as strict quarantines.
The non-pharmaceutical interventions (INF) analyzed included, among others, all those related to the
movement and gathering of people
, the provision of medical and protective equipment, communicational and the improvement of systems for detecting patients.
The study covers what happened in
79 territories
.
And the determination of the effectiveness of the measures was carried out by combining computational techniques that merge statistical tools, inference and artificial intelligence.
In turn, the results were validated against data external to work, corresponding to practically all the countries of the world.
"Our results indicate that an
appropriate combination
of INF
is necessary
to slow the spread of the virus. The least disruptive and costly INF can be as effective as the most intrusive and drastic (for example, a national lockdown). Using hypothetical scenarios specific to each country, we evaluate how the effectiveness of INF depends on the local context as well as the moment of its adoption, which opens the way to
predict the effectiveness of future interventions
", the researchers point out in the article in which they presented their work, published in the scientific journal
Nature Human Behavior
.
As might be expected, the scientists found heterogeneity in the effectiveness of the different measures depending on where in the world they were.
"We found that the implementation time, previously implemented measures, different governance indicators, as well as
human and social development
, influence the effectiveness of INF in different countries and to varying degrees," the experts noted.
According to one of the
rankings
prepared by scientists, the measures that had the greatest impact on the rates of contagion of covid-19 were
the cancellation of meetings with few people
, the closure of educational institutions, border restrictions and the greater availability of protection elements .
In that list, the restrictions on individual movement continue and
only then does the
national lockdown
appear
, in position number six.
Another striking conclusion from the research is that
improving
virus
detection systems
is ranked 15th among the most effective measures.
The work, published on Monday, analyzed data from 6,068 INF implemented in March and April 2020, when most European countries and US states were experiencing their first waves of infection from the pandemic.
Another conclusion of the work is the
low
relative
effectiveness
of the
disinfection of environments
.
"A clear picture emerges in which issues of social distancing and travel restrictions rank first in all [measurement methods used], while environmental measures (eg, cleaning and disinfecting shared surfaces) are rank as the least effective, "say the authors.
LGP
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