Full Lockdown Policies in Western Europe Countries Have No Evident Impacts On The COVID-19 Epidemic
Full Lockdown Policies in Western Europe Countries Have No Evident Impacts On The COVID-19 Epidemic
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toll. Attempting a real-time assessment of full changes are noticed in the trend of the daily death
lockdown policies efficiency thus seems crucial to growth rate, doubling time, or reproduction number,
help public action decisions in the forthcoming weeks. weeks after lockdown policies should have impacts.
2
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where the time varying function γ(t) will be referred and Γ(t) can be retrieved as in Eq (6):
to as the growth rate of c(t). Expressing time evolu-
ln(D(t + δt)) − ln(D(t))
tion of the daily new cases number in the form of Eq Γ(t) = (9)
(3) can be thought of as a generalization of Richards’s δt
phenomenological model [18]. The doubling time (T2 ) is related to Γ following:
If γ is a constant, c(t) is a pure exponential. If ln(2)
γ(t) is a linearly decaying function of the form γ(t) = T2 = (10)
Γ
β + αt, with α < 0, c(t) is a Gauss function, and Tp
and τ can be expressed in terms of the slope and so that we can obtain instantaneous estimates
intercept of γ(t): of T2 (t) without waiting for the number of total
r fatalities to actually double.
−1
τ= , (4)
α To assess the efficiency of lockdown policies, we
−β first compute the growth rate γ(t) from the daily
Tp = − (5) deaths observations and apply linear regression to
2α
estimate its trend before the lockdown should have
In that case, the short time asymptotic limit is close
any visible effects (t < Tld + Td , where Tld is the start
to a pure exponential growth, since t << Tp . It then
date of the lockdown measures). We then predict
slows down as t approaches Tp , and starts to decay
values for each variable of interest after the lockdown
as t passes Tp . Eq (3) however allows any form of
should have visible effects by extrapolating the linear
γ(t) and is not restricted to Gaussian or exponential
evolution of γ(t) after this date. This allows us to
behaviors. Values of γ(t) can be retrieved from any
compare observed values of growth rate, daily deaths,
time series of the daily new cases number, or equiva-
doubling time, and total fatalities number, with
lently the daily death number :
the values expected from the pre-lockdown trend
d(t + δt) ln(d(t + δt)) − ln(d(t)) (what would have happened if nothing had changed).
γ(t) = ln( )/δt = (6)
d(t) δt
To assess the evolution of the epidemic with a more
γ(t) can thus be defined as the time derivative of the
classical approach, we also compute an instantaneous
natural logarithm of the daily death number. This
reproduction number as well as an estimate of the re-
method is commonly used in the study of transient
production number, based on the daily deaths data
perturbations growth in fluid mechanic’s generalized
and Eq (2), which links the daily deaths number, the
stability theory [6, 12]. In this work, we will be
fatality rate, and the daily new cases number. The
primarily studying the time variations of γ, and
reproduction number is the number of secondary in-
search for visible trends in the latter.
fections provoked by a typical case [1]. In practice,
the reproduction number shows large variability de-
Since the time necessary for the number of fatalities
pending on a number of factors such as the age or
to double (hereafter doubling time) is a commonly
the region [15]. However, a mean estimate is useful
used diagnostic of an epidemic evolution, it is also
to assess the epidemic stage. Here, we approximate
computed in this work. The total number of deaths at
the instantaneous reproduction number Ri as the ra-
time t is the time integral of the daily death number:
tio of the number of new cases and the total number
Z t
of contagious cases at time t:
D(t) = d(s)ds (7)
0 c(t)
Ri (t) = R t , (11)
Since D(t) is also a strictly positive function, it can t−T c
(c(s) − d(s))ds
be expressed in a similar form as Eq (3):
where Tc is the time during which an infected person
D(t) = D(0)eΓ(t)t (8) remains contagious, and s is an integration variable.
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It is important to note that we make the assump- To compute the growth rate of the daily deaths
tions that new cases start to be contagious right af- number γ(t) and of the total fatalities number Γ(t)
ter infection (zero generation time), and that all cases as well as the doubling time T2 (t), the daily deaths
within the contagion period Td are equally likely to data are first low-pass filtered using a 3-days running
produce secondary infections. While our simplifying mean on the logarithm ln(d(t)).
hypothesis of zero generation time might yield to an The values used here for the time between infec-
underestimate of the reproduction number, it does tion and death Td ranges between 14 and 20 days,
not affect its general trend, which is what this study with a median reference value of 17 days. It cor-
is focused on. The reproduction number R, which is responds to the averaged value of hospitalization to
the number of persons that will be infected by each death reported by Russell et al. (2020) [19] (13 days)
contagious person during the time Tc is approximated plus a period of 1 to 7 days between infection and
as: hospitalization. Two different values of the time dur-
ing which an infected person remains contagious (Tc )
Z t+Tc
R(t) = Ri (s)ds (12) were tested to infer the reproduction number: 14, and
t 21 days. The former is the duration of the quarantine
applied to any confirmed cases in most countries, and
The epidemic is in a growing phase if R > 1 and the latter is a longer estimate used for comparison
decays otherwise. since the 14 days value is uncertain [19]. For com-
puting estimates of the daily case number, we used a
fatality rate of 1.7 %, which is a median value between
Russell et al. (2020)’s [19] estimates of the Infection
2 Data Fatality Ratio and Case Fatality Ratio onboard the
Diamond Princess passenger ship. The latter also
Because of the important proportion of asymp- closely matches South Korea’s fatality rate (1.6%)
tomatic cases of COVID-19 [2, 17, 13] and of [4], which is one of the most reliable national esti-
the testing policies of most countries, which are mate so far, given the wide-range testing policy and
restrained to severe and potentially deadly cases, the the advanced stage of the epidemic in this country.
daily number of new confirmed cases is not a reliable
variable to assess the evolution of the epidemic. We
thus only used the daily deaths number to estimate 3 Results
the growth rates and their trends. The daily number
of new cases is inferred from the daily death number Time evolution of the reproduction numbers Ri
and a fixed fatality rate using Eq (2). and R is shown in figure 1 for France, Italy, Spain,
The data used in this study are produced by the and United Kingdom. 4 different estimates are
European Center for Disease Prevention and Control proposed in each figure: the estimates defined in
(ECDC). Because of a lack of daily deaths reports Eq (12), computed for values of contagion duration
in nursing homes in France until 02 April 2020, of Tc = 14 and 21 days, as well as values of the
that were suddenly corrected in the dataset, we instantaneous reproduction number multiplied by
only use hospital deaths data for this country, for the contagion duration (Ri Tc ). For all four variables,
consistency of the time series. The daily and total time evolution exhibits a similar pattern: a steady
deaths numbers in France are thus greatly underes- decreasing trend from 3.5 to 6 secondary infections
timated in our study, but one should keep in mind per case in the beginning of the epidemic to less
that we are focused on time evolution and trends than unity 20 to 40 days before the reference date
rather than absolute values, so that time-consistency (April 24). In all four countries, no discontinuity in
is the single most important requirement for the data. the general decaying trend is observed around the
full lockdown’s start date. Even though this date
4
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coincides approximately with the 1-crossing of R lockdown with the same slope as before lockdown).
in France, Italy, and Spain, the latter is only the Comparing these estimates (dashed green line) with
follow-up of a longer term decay. Note that, despite the observed values (blue squares) shows that the
the simplifying assumptions used here, our estimates initial pre-lockdown trend yields a steeper rise in the
are of the same order of magnitude as Liu et al. doubling time than what is observed after lockdown
(2020)[11]’s interval [1.4-6.49] for the outbreak in policies should have visible impacts. The visual
Wuhan. impression of an accelerating T2 growth in the data
is thus not to be attributed to the lockdown effects,
Analysis of the evolution of the growth rate γ(t) but rather to the inherent growth of the T2 function
confirms this long-term trend in the trajectory of when Γ(t) reaches small values. Figure 3 thus also
the epidemic before any full lockdown policies were underlines the lack of evidence of any effects of the
effective (figure 2). A general decaying trend of γ(t) full lockdown.
is evident from the beginning of the epidemic in all
4 countries, although some variability exists around Similarly to the doubling time, we estimated
the linear trend, with a nearly periodic oscillation the evolution of the daily deaths number in the
of 5 to 8 days. Linear regression satisfyingly models hypothesis of a continuation of the pre-lockdown
the time evolution of γ, with coefficients of determi- trend in γ(t) after the lockdown policies should have
nation r2 (fraction of the variance explained by the visible impacts. Our results show that, even though
model) of 0.67, 0.72, 0.73, and 0.61 for France, Italy, the dates of the daily deaths peaks in France, Italy,
Spain, and United Kingdom, respectively. Linearity and Spain roughly correspond to the dates where
of γ(t) suggests that time evolution of the epidemic lockdown effects should be visible, the peak dates
is consistent with a Gauss function. Comparing expected from the pre-lockdown trends are actually
the linear decaying trend before, and after the time the same. Moreover, daily deaths observations after
by which full lockdown policies should have visible this date show a slower decay than what would be
impacts, we find that the slope of γ(t) decreases in expected from the pre-lockdown tendencies. Forecast
France, Italy, and Spain after the full lockdown, and of the future evolution of the daily deaths number
remains constant in United Kingdom. The decay of using the same method with the linear trend of the
the epidemic has thus slowed since the lockdown is full time series and the latest observations is also
effective. Comparison of the general decay trends shown as the blue line (for indicative purpose only).
in France, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom with
that of the Netherlands provides a further insight Time evolution of the total death toll, both
on the effects of full lockdown: Netherlands decay observed, and predicted from pre-lockdown trends
trend is slightly slower than France and Spain is shown in figure 5. One would expect total dead
before lockdown, and is nearly similar to Italy and numbers to rapidly saturate at a value close from
United Kingdom’s. In all four countries, the decay that corresponding to the crossing of the curve
trend after the effective lockdown is slower than and the date of expected visible lockdown effects.
Netherlands trend. However, the total dead number kept on growing
after this date, closely following the values expected
Since a raw, visual analysis of the effects of full from pre-lockdown trends, and even reaching values
lockdown on the doubling time could mislead to the beyond the death toll expected from the latter.
impression that its increase is accelerated after the Again, the forecast dead number obtained from
lockdown is effective, we should carefully inspect the extrapolating γ(t)’s linear trend in the future is
results of figure 3. We computed an estimate of the presented for indicative purpose. It is however
doubling time, assuming the pre-lockdown trend in interesting to notice the consistency in the order of
γ(t) remains constant after the lockdown is effective magnitude of the final total deaths forecast at a 15
(we assume that γ(t) keeps on linearly decaying after to 30 days interval (at the time of the lockdowns and
5
medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717.this version posted May 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which
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immunity. Under the rough assumption that 50 spread and fatality rates of covid-19. Proceedings
to 70% of the population needs to be infected to of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020.
ensure group immunity, it is possible to compute
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[8] L. S. Hung. The sars epidemic in hong kong:
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was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.
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Figure 1: Time evolution of the reproduction number for France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain. The blue square
represent the daily reproduction number multiplied by an estimate of the time during which a case is contagious
(Ri Tc ). The green dots represent the reproduction number (R) computed as a time integral of the daily reproduction
number (Ri ) and thus takes into account time variations of the latter. The dashed vertical orange line is the start
date of the lockdown policies. Two values of Tc were used for each variable: 14 and 21 days. Time is referenced to
April 24, 2020.
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Figure 2: Time evolution of the growth rate of the daily deaths number (γ(t)) for France, Italy, Spain, and Great
Britain. The vertical orange dashed line shows the start date of the full lockdown policies. The orange shaded area
represents the time at which the lockdown should show some effects in the epidemic spreading (14 to 20 days), and
the thick line is the reference date (17 days). The blue squares represent the observations, and the thick gray line
represents the linear trend of the observations. The dashed green and red lines represent the linear trends before and
after the lockdown should affect the observations. Time is referenced to April 24, 2020.
10
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Figure 3: Same as figure 2 for the doubling time. The thick dotted green line represents the expected evolution if
the pre-lockdown linear trend in γ(t) is extrapolated beyond the day lockdown policies are expected to be effective
(What would happen without any lockdown, assuming that the growth rate’s evolution remains the same). Time is
referenced to April 24, 2020.
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Figure 4: Same as figure 3 for the daily deaths number. The green dotted lines represents the expected evolution
based on the pre-lockdown trend of γ(t), while the plain blue line represents the expected future evolution based on
the full time series trend of γ(t). The light blue shading represents an error margin computed by doubling or dividing
by two the slope of the linear fit to γ(t). Time is referenced to April 24, 2020.
12
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Figure 6: Comparison of the time evolution of the epidemic for 10 countries. The time reference is chosen to be
the day each country reaches a total dead number of 100. The top left hand side panel shows the time evolution
of γ(t); the top right hand side panel shows the linear fits to γ(t); the bottom left hand side panel shows values of
the reproduction number R(t); the bottom right-hand side panel shows the instantaneous doubling time. Time is
referenced to April 24, 2020.
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medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717.this version posted May 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which
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