Effects of information-induced behavioural changes during the COVID-19 lockdowns: the case of Italy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that started in China in December 2019 has not only threatened world public health, but severely impacted almost every facet of life, including behavioural and psychological aspects. In this paper, we focus on the ‘human element’ and propose a mathematical model to investigate the effects on the COVID-19 epidemic of social behavioural changes in response to lockdowns. We consider an SEIR-like epidemic model where the contact and quarantine rates depend on the available information and rumours about the disease status in the community. The model is applied to the case of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy. We consider the period that stretches between 24 February 2020, when the first bulletin by the Italian Civil Protection was reported and 18 May 2020, when the lockdown restrictions were mostly removed. The role played by the information-related parameters is determined by evaluating how they affect suitable outbreak-severity indicators. We estimate that citizen compliance with mitigation measures played a decisive role in curbing the epidemic curve by preventing a duplication of deaths and about 46% more infections.

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on physical and mental health of Asians: A study of seven middle-income countries in Asia

“…Third, based on our findings, the WHO, governments and health authorities should provide regular updates on the effectiveness of vaccines and treatment methods. Mis-information related to the cause of COVID-19 [41], rumours [42] and inconsistent information [43] on COVID-19 symptoms, prevention, treatment and transmission mode were associated with negative psychological impact. Local governments, news agencies, professional and advocacy organisations should all provide health information and advices related to COVID-19 that are consistent with national guidelines and avoid mis-information [44].…”

One year of COVID-19 in Italy: are containment policies enough to shape the pandemic pattern?

“…Here, we assume that people react with fear in response to information about the daily percentage of positive cases and sanctioned individuals, which would result in voluntary compliance to the restrictions on the following day, thus making citizens spend more time at home (see Refs. [ 11 , 47 ]).…”

“…The active centre of the pandemic had moved from Asia to Europe, while China successfully managed to contain the spread of the virus, finally putting the quarantine in Wuhan to an end on the 8th of April [ 3 ]. Italy ultimately emerged from the lockdown on the 4th of May, slowly starting to reopen its economic activities [ 11 ].…”

Managing awareness can avoid hysteresis in disease spread: an application to coronavirus Covid-19

“…For example in Italy, during the outbreak, the combined action of the restrictive government measures and of media-driven awareness programs have played a very crucial role in softening the severity of the epidemic. In fact if compulsory restrictive measures (lockdown) have reduced disease transmission because of the dramatic change in people everyday behaviors [11] , [12] , media-driven programs have greatly contributed to the maintenance over time of a responsible and respectful behavior by the means of a constant awareness action according to the basic idea that, if carrying out tens of thousands of tampons for day could not stop the virus alone, our behaviors can strongly help to do it. On this line, most countries and the WHO have used the great potential of Internet to promote awareness and educational programs on Covid19 and surveying the relative internet search volumes (RSV) was deemed as a means to give information on the extent of public attention, with Google Trends as one of the most widely used tools for this aim [13] , [14] .…”