Designing a Covid-19 lockdown

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-03-21 03:00

New Zealand

PHOTO: Alexas Fotos/Unsplash

How might lockdowns might be best designed to both maximise compliance and stop the spread of the virus? NZ researchers asked 16 Covid-19 experts to rank lockdown features solely based on their inconvenience, regardless of how effective they are at controlling the pandemic. The experts said the most inconvenient lockdown feature was not being allowed to travel within NZ or overseas, while being required to wear masks in public caused the least inconvenience. The study investigators say such questions could also be asked of the general public in a wider study in an effort to inform NZ policy makers on designing a lockdown that’s both effective in public health terms and most likely to be complied with.

Media release

From:

Journal/
conference: Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Otago

Funder: The first author (DW) declares no competing interests. The second author (PH) is a part owner of 1000minds Ltd (New Zealand), whose 1000minds software (www.1000minds.com) which he coinvented, is used in the article. Thank you to the participants in the survey that the research is based on, and to the New Zealand Science Media Centre for help with distributing the survey to its network.

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