What Can We Learn from the Time Evolution of COVID-19 Epidemic in Slovenia?

TL;DR

This study analyzes Slovenia's COVID-19 epidemic evolution, showing that social measures like masks and distancing are nearly as effective as strict lockdowns, and reveals population self-protection behaviors before official measures.

Contribution

It provides a data-driven analysis of containment measures' effectiveness in Slovenia without relying on theoretical models, highlighting behavioral responses.

Findings

Curfews and travel restrictions reduce infection rate by four times.

Mask-wearing and social distancing improve the infection rate by about 15%.

Population exhibits self-protection instincts before official lockdowns.

Abstract

A recent work (DOI 10.1101/2020.05.06.20093310) indicated that temporarily splitting larger populations into smaller groups can efficiently mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus. The fact that, soon afterwards, on May 15, 2020, the two million people Slovenia was the first European country proclaiming the end of COVID-19 epidemic within national borders may be relevant from this perspective. Motivated by this evolution, in this paper we investigate the time dynamics of coronavirus cases in Slovenia with emphasis on how efficient various containment measures act to diminish the number of COVID-19 infections. Noteworthily, the present analysis does not rely on any speculative theoretical assumption; it is solely based on raw epidemiological data. Out of the results presented here, the most important one is perhaps the finding that, while imposing drastic curfews and travel restrictions reduce the infection rate kappa by a factor of four with respect to the unrestricted state, they only improve the \k{appa}-value by ~15 % as compared to the much bearable state of social and economical life wherein (justifiable) wearing face masks and social distancing rules are enforced/followed. Significantly for behavioral and social science, our analysis of the time dependence \k{appa} = \k{appa}(t) may reveal an interesting self-protection instinct of the population, which became manifest even before the official lockdown enforcement.