Abstract
Objectives
During the COVID-19 pandemic, broad non-pharmaceutical interventions such as national lockdowns were effective but had significant drawbacks, prompting targeted approaches, such as Denmark's localized lockdowns, based on specific epidemiological criteria. This study evaluates the effect of Denmark's automated local lockdown strategy on epidemic control to inform future response.
Methods
This was a register-based controlled interrupted time series analysis, examining SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in Danish parishes from March to September 2021. The matching of control parishes was based on location, time, and pre-lockdown infection trends, with the lockdown's start defined as the day after a parish exceeded the lockdown criteria. Follow-up included 3-week pre-lockdown and 2-week post-lockdown.
Results
A total of 30 parishes were mandated to lockdown, approximately 3.5% of the population of Denmark. A total of 94 control parishes were used as 109 controls. The decrease in the incidence during the 2-week follow-up period after the initiation of the lockdown was 13% points higher in case parishes: in case parishes, the incidence was reduced by 78% compared with 65% in control parishes.
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate that local lockdowns did have a positive effect in mitigating the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, making them valuable in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and an important alternative to national lockdowns.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, broad non-pharmaceutical interventions such as national lockdowns were effective but had significant drawbacks, prompting targeted approaches, such as Denmark's localized lockdowns, based on specific epidemiological criteria. This study evaluates the effect of Denmark's automated local lockdown strategy on epidemic control to inform future response.
Methods
This was a register-based controlled interrupted time series analysis, examining SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in Danish parishes from March to September 2021. The matching of control parishes was based on location, time, and pre-lockdown infection trends, with the lockdown's start defined as the day after a parish exceeded the lockdown criteria. Follow-up included 3-week pre-lockdown and 2-week post-lockdown.
Results
A total of 30 parishes were mandated to lockdown, approximately 3.5% of the population of Denmark. A total of 94 control parishes were used as 109 controls. The decrease in the incidence during the 2-week follow-up period after the initiation of the lockdown was 13% points higher in case parishes: in case parishes, the incidence was reduced by 78% compared with 65% in control parishes.
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate that local lockdowns did have a positive effect in mitigating the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, making them valuable in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and an important alternative to national lockdowns.
Originalsprog | Engelsk |
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Artikelnummer | 100380 |
Tidsskrift | IJID Regions |
Vol/bind | 12 |
Antal sider | 7 |
ISSN | 2772-7076 |
DOI | |
Status | Udgivet - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:LE has received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark ( 10.46540/2061-00050B ) to conduct this research. The Independent Research Fund Denmark had no involvement in the study apart from funding.
Funding Information:
LE has received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (10.46540/2061-00050B) to conduct this research. The Independent Research Fund Denmark had no involvement in the study, apart from funding. For this study, we have used publicly available aggregated register data. According to Danish law, ethical approval is not to be obtained for register-based studies not using biological material. The study was approved by the legal department at Statens Serum Institute, according to regulations by the Danish Data Protection Agency. All authors took part in the conceptualization of the study and discussed the methodology. LE did the formal analysis and visualization with supervision from LEC. LE did validation and writing of the original draft with supervision from LEC, LM, and SE. All authors took part in reviewing and editing the manuscript. The data are available for access to members of the scientific and medical community for non-commercial use only. Applications should be submitted to Forskerservice at the Danish Health and Medicines Authority, where they will be reviewed based on relevance and scientific merit. During the preparation of this work, LE used ChatGPT to improve readability and language of certain sections. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors