The Effects of Behavioral Restrictions on the Spread of COVID-19

Abstract

Several measures, including behavioral restrictions for individuals, have been taken throughout the world to control the spread of COVID-19. The aim of these measures is to prevent infected persons from coming into contact with susceptible persons. Since the behavioral restrictions for all citizens, such as city-wide lockdowns, were directly linked to the stagnation of economic activities, the assessment of such measures is crucial. In order to evaluate the effects of behavioral restrictions, we employed the broken-link model to compare the situation of COVID-19 in Shanghai, where a lockdown was implemented from March to June 2022, with the situation in Taiwan, where the spread of COVID-19 has been well controlled so far. The results show that the small link-connection probability was achieved by the substantial isolation of infected persons, including the lockdown measures. Although the strict measures for behavioral restrictions were effective to reduce the total number infected people, the daily reported cases per one million people followed the curve evaluated by the broken-link model. This result considers that infections are unavoidable for the population.