An Early Assessment of Curfew and Second COVID-19 Lock-down on Virus Propagation in France

  1. Christelle Baunez
  2. Mickael Degoulet
  3. Stéphane Luchini
  4. Patrick A. Pintus
  5. Miriam Teschl

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Abstract

This note provides an early assessment of the reinforced measures to curb the COVID-19 pandemic in France, which include a curfew of selected areas and culminate in a second COVID-19-related lock-down that started on October 30, 2020 and is still ongoing. We analyse the change in virus propagation across age groups and across départements using an acceleration index introduced in Baunez et al. (2020). We find that while the pandemic is still in the acceleration regime, acceleration decreased notably with curfew measures and this more rapidly so for the more vulnerable population group, that is, for people older than 60. Acceleration continued to decline under lock-down, but more so for the active population under 60 than for those above 60. For the youngest population aged 0 to 19, curfew measures did not reduce acceleration but lock-down does. This suggests that if health policies aim at protecting the elderly population generally more at risk to suffer severe consequences from COVID-19, curfew measures may be effective enough. However, looking at the departmental map of France, we find that curfews have not necessarily been imposed in départements where acceleration was the largest.

JEL Classification Numbers

I18; H12

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.11.20230243: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.11.20230243v1 on medRxiv