Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary?

During the spread of SARS-Cov-2, Germany imposed various restrictions, including an extensive lockdown on 23 March 2020. In this paper, we point out that the evaluation of the success of such policies depends critically on data quality. Using reported confirmed cases is apt to produce misleading results because these data come with unknown variable lags. Using data on incident cases, i.e., dates of the onset of symptoms, produces results that are much more reliable.

[1]  Joel Hellewell,et al.  Estimating the infection and case fatality ratio for COVID-19 using age-adjusted data from the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship , 2020, medRxiv.

[2]  N. G. Davies,et al.  Age-dependent effects in the transmission and control of COVID-19 epidemics , 2020, Nature Medicine.

[3]  Joao Pinheiro Neto,et al.  Model-based and model-free characterization of epidemic outbreaks , 2020, medRxiv.

[4]  T. Wieland.  Flatten the Curve! Modeling SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Growth in Germany on the County Level , 2020, medRxiv.

[5]  G. Rubin,et al.  The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence , 2020, The Lancet.

[6]  A. Evangelista.  The Seasonal End of Human Coronavirus Hospital Admissions with Implications for SARS-CoV-2 , 2020, medRxiv.

[7]  R. Viner,et al.  School closure and management practices during coronavirus outbreaks including COVID-19: a rapid systematic review , 2020, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

[8]  Caetano Souto-Maior,et al.  Individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to SARS-CoV-2 lowers the herd immunity threshold , 2020, medRxiv.

[9]  Matthias an der Heiden,et al.  Schätzung der aktuellen Entwicklung der SARS-CoV-2- Epidemie in Deutschland – Nowcasting , 2020 .

[10]  J. Edmunds,et al.  The macroeconomic impact of pandemic influenza: estimates from models of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and The Netherlands , 2010, The European Journal of Health Economics.

[11]  J. Desenclos,et al.  Cluster of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in the French Alps, 2020 , 2020, Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

[12]  Hannah R. Meredith,et al.  The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application , 2020, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[13]  Gary Alan Bass,et al.  Elective surgery cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic: global predictive modelling to inform surgical recovery plans , 2020, The British journal of surgery.

[14]  Sandro Galea,et al.  The Mental Health Consequences of COVID-19 and Physical Distancing: The Need for Prevention and Early Intervention. , 2020, JAMA internal medicine.

[15]  U. Buchholz,et al.  Abrupter Rückgang der Raten an Atemwegserkrankungen in der deutschen Bevölkerung , 2020 .

[16]  Johannes Zierenberg,et al.  Inferring change points in the spread of COVID-19 reveals the effectiveness of interventions , 2020, Science.