The COVID-19 pandemic that has held the world hostage shows no signs of abating. Countries and organisations across the world have tried to contain the spread and bring down the rate of infection in their respective regions. But unfortunately, nothing seems to be working. Slowly, authorities are waking up to the fact that this disease is here to stay. We may have to live with it for a long time to come. With no cure or vaccine in sight, this is a worrying prospect. Now, with the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions, the need to look out for yourself becomes all the more important. Of course, precautionary methods like social distancing and wearing of face masks among others will help to a great extent.
According to a recent study at the University of Oxford in the UK, social bubbles or small groups of close contacts made up of friends and family may be the best way to keep COVID-19 contained when a lockdown is lifted. Researchers say that lifting the lockdown in favour of strategic distancing, could lead to improved compliance with official recommendations and ‘keep the curve’ flat, in terms of Covid-19 infections. The journal Nature Human Behaviour published this study.
Allow social contact but keep risks down
The research team modelled three scenarios to discover the best measures governments could use in order to keep the infection rate flat. They successfully demonstrated that the strategic reduction of contact can strongly increase the efficiency of social distancing measures. This introduces the possibility of allowing some social contact while keeping risks low.
According to researchers of the above-mentioned study, Simple changes within an individuals’ social networks, and network-informed constellations within businesses and schools, can alter the rate and spread of the virus.
Three scenarios that can contain spread of infection
The research team looked at three different scenarios for how people could interact more with others in a post-lockdown world while still keeping the spread of COVID-19 low.
This included keeping contact within the neighbourhood, people you see regularly and creating social bubbles with certain groups of people. Each strategy offers the prospect of increased social contact, in a clearly defined way. All three strategies substantially slow the spread of the virus compared to either no intervention or simple, un-strategic social distancing.
Effective strategy to slow the spread of the virus
According to the researchers, the third strategy, creating social bubbles, was the most effective strategy. Maintaining similarity across contacts, such as only interacting with people who live within the same neighbourhood, and decreasing ties with occasional acquaintances were found to be highly effective when compared to reducing contact at random. Researchers suggest that reducing high-impact contact, rather than reducing or removing it overall, can mitigate adverse social, behavioural and economic impacts of lockdown approaches while keeping risks low.
By offering different social distancing strategies, the study also proposes alternatives to social bubbles in cases when forming these is not practicable. Researchers suggest that all discussed approaches mitigate the recognised psychological and physical harms of prolonged social distancing.