2020/06/02 by Simon Childs, Childs, Simon
Mathematics · Medicine · #92B05 #92C60 #92D30 #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #J.3 #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.01497
openalex publication_date 2020/06/02 · openalex created_date 2022/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This research quantifies the various South African lockdown regimes, for the\nSARS-CoV-2 pandemic, in terms of the basic reproduction number, r0. It\nfurther calculates the levels of immunity required for these selfsame lockdown\nregimes to begin to work and predicts perceived values, should infections have\nbeen underestimated by a factor of 10. The latter results are compelling. The\nfirst, level-5 lockdown was a valiant attempt to contain the highly infectious,\nSARS-CoV-2 virus, based on a limited knowledge. Its basic reproduction number\n(r0 = 1.93) never came anywhere close to the requirement of being less than\nunity. Obviously, it could be anticipated that the same would apply for\nsubsequent, lower levels of lockdown. The basic reproduction number for the\nlevel-3 lockdown was found to be 2.34 and that of the level-4 lockdown,\n1.69.The suggestion is therefore that the level-4 lockdown might have been\nmarginally `smarter' than the `harder', level-5 lockdown, although its basic\nreproduction number may merely reflect an adjustment by the public to the new\nnormal, or the ever-present error associated with data sets, in general. The\npandemic's basic reproduction number was calculated to be 3.16, in the\nSwedish context. The lockdowns therefore served to ensure that the medical\nsystem was not overwhelmed, bought it valuable time to prepare and provided\nuseful data. The lockdowns nonetheless failed significantly in meeting any\nobjective to curtail the pandemic.\n