COVID-19: Were Public Health Interventions and the Disclosure of Patients’ Contact History Effective in Upholding Social Distancing? Evidence from South Korea

Abstract

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted a globalscale public health response. Social distancing, along with intensive testing and contact tracing, has been considered an effective vehicle to reduce new infections. In this study, we aimed to estimate the effect of South Korean public health measures on behavioral changes with respect to social distancing without a nationwide lockdown. The results of this study may provide insights to countries who are planning to relax their aggressive restrictions though still having an unflattened curve of infections. Methods: To estimate how the closure of educational and social welfare facilities and the disclosure of confirmed patients' contact history affected social distancing behaviors, we analyzed public transportation data in Seoul, Korea. For the modeling analysis, we used linear mixed-effects estimation. Results: Our estimation showed that the average daily number of bus passengers decreased by 21.8% in February 2020 as compared to the previous year with an additional decrease observed in the areas around educational and social welfare facilities. The highest drop in the daily number of passengers was observed in areas with religious facilities. We also found that individuals avoided areas that were proximate to or within the locations that constituted the confirmed patients' contact history. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that public health measures can lead people to practice social distancing. Among them, the measures that strongly encourage voluntary social distancing behaviors would play a critical role in suppressing the infections as it becomes increasingly difficult to continue imposing aggressive restrictions due to practical and economic reasons.

Assessing the Fear Factor of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Korea Using the COVID-19 Phobia Scale: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…In addition, a significant effect of social distancing was found only in the economic subscale, which reflects the heavier economic burden on the self-employed, owing to the Korean government’s restrictions on business hours and the size of allowed gatherings (four or six persons) since 2021. 30 The Korean government has introduced measures to ease the aforementioned COVID-19-related restrictions and has gradually implemented them from April 2022. However, the analysis in this study revealed that a higher COVID-19 phobia was observed in the groups that considered social distancing measures ineffective, disagreed with the government’s COVID-19 mitigation policy, and avoided crowded places.…”