HISTORY

A new disease that spread around the world

On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of a cluster of individuals with pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China. On January 12, 2020, China shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus with other countries to help develop diagnostic tests. Thailand reported the first known case of the novel coronavirus outside of China on January 13, 2020. WHO declared the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020 with 7,711 confirmed cases, 12,167 suspected cases, and 170 deaths in China and 83 cases in 18 countries outside of China. The disease was later named COVID-19 for coronavirus disease 2019 and the virus referred to as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

Physical distancing policies and knowledge gaps

As an emerging infectious disease, there were no effective vaccines or preventive treatments for SARS-CoV-2 on a wide scale at the beginning of the pandemic. Therefore, governments have had to rely on the use of public policies to combat the spread of the virus. Creating policies has been difficult due to the large amount of information and ongoing uncertainty around the characteristics of the virus and who it affects. One of the most commonly used policy to mitigate (slow) the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 centres on physical or social distancing, which relies on separating people to reduce the transmission of the virus. However, it is still unclear when is the best time to institute such policies and what happens when distancing policies are eased. There are many aspects of distancing, such as recommendations for maintaining a physical distance in public, banning group gatherings, or complete lockdowns, that complicate their assessment. There are also many factors that have been attributed to people acquiring or having a worse outcome from COVID-19. However, there was no harmonized database available with all the policies, epidemiology and contextual information that is needed in order to perform comparative analyses useful to informing policy making.

This project