One of the largest nationwide bursts of the first COVID-19 outbreak occurred in Spain, where infection expanded in densely populated areas through March 2020.
In the article Chasing the ghost of infection past: identifying thresholds of change during the COVID-19 infection in Spain, recently published in Epidemilogy & Infection, we analyzed the cumulative growth curves of reported cases and deaths in Spain, Madrid and Catalonia, and associate identify changes in their growth curve with key events, containment measures, policy stringency and citizen mobility.
Results showed four major reductions in growth rates originating from infections before March 3 and on March 5–8, 10–12 and 14–18, but no identifiable effect of the strengthened lockdown of 29–30 March. Changes in stringency and mobility were only associated to the latter two shifts.
These patterns of change show that a combination of public awareness, personal hygiene and social distancing can help slow down COVID-19 spread in future outbreaks – such as the one already ongoing in Spain or Israel in September 2020. They also emphasize that policy implementation should be accompanied by a more effective communication strategy that helps engaging the general public into following measures whose effectiveness can be misperceived due to the long infection-to-detection lags of SARS-CoV-2 infections.
This virtuous combination of active public health and information policies, and the reinforcement of primary health care would help avoiding the harsh economic and social consequences of having to recourse to hard lockdowns in current and future outbursts of COVID-19 and other pandemics.
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