Abstract
European countries struggled to fight against the second and the third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Test-Trace-Isolate (TTI) strategy widely adopted over the summer and early fall 2020 failed to contain the spread of the disease effectively. This paper sheds light on the effectiveness of such a strategy in two European countries (Spain and Italy) by analysing data from June to December 2020, collected via a large-scale online citizen survey with 95,251 and 43,393 answers in Spain and Italy, respectively. Our analysis describes several weaknesses in each of the three pillars of the TTI strategy: Test, Trace, and Isolate. We find that 40% of respondents had to wait more than 48 hours to obtain coronavirus tests results, while literature has shown that a delay of more than one day might make tracing all cases inefficient. We also identify limitations in the manual contact tracing capabilities in both countries, as only 29% of respondents in close contact with a confirmed infected individual reported having been contact traced. Moreover, our analysis shows that more than 45% of respondents report being unable to self-isolate if needed. We also analyse the mitigation strategies deployed to contain the second wave of coronavirus. We find that these interventions were particularly effective in Italy, where close contacts were reduced by more than 20% in the general population. Finally, we analyse the participants’ perceptions about the coronavirus risk associated with different daily activities. We observe that they are often gender- and age-dependent, and not aligned with the actual risk identified by the literature. This finding emphasises the importance of deploying public-health communication campaigns to debunk misconceptions about SARS-CoV-2. Overall, our work illustrates the value of online citizen surveys to quickly and efficiently collect large-scale population data to support and evaluate policy decisions to combat the spread of infectious diseases, such as coronavirus.
Highlights
Since March 2020, Europe has been fighting the coronavirus pandemic
The survey consists of 26 questions that ask participants about their demographic and household information, their social behaviour and adopted protection measures to prevent a coronavirus infection, their ability to isolate, their willingness to get tested and vaccinated, their perception about the adopted government measures and the risk of infection associated with different activities/places
We find that 75% of participants reported having been contacted by contact tracers (Italy: 78%, Spain: 74% ); 62% declared that some of their close contacts were traced (Italy: 62%, Spain: 62% ), and 42% reported that their close contacts were tested for coronavirus (Italy: 33%, Spain: 46% )
Summary
Since March 2020, Europe has been fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The first wave of infections during March and April 2020 led to a significant excess in mortality rates[1–4] and caused unprecedented pressure in the healthcare systems of many European countries. Governments do not typically collect (or are unable to share) detailed statistics about each of the three pillars—namely, Test-Trace-Isolate—of this strategy, making it challenging to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the implemented measures to control the spread of coronavirus. This manuscript describes an analysis of the effectiveness of the pandemic control strategies and mitigation interventions implemented in Spain and Italy between June and December of 2020. Our work illustrates the value of online surveys as a cheap and efficient tool to quickly collect large-scale population data about people’s perception, situation and self-reported behaviour during a pandemic
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