A dataset of non-pharmaceutical interventions on SARS-CoV-2 in Europe.

During the second half of 2020, many European governments responded to the resurging transmission of SARS-CoV-2 with wide-ranging non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). These efforts were often highly targeted at the regional level and included fine-grained NPIs. This paper describes a new dataset designed for the accurate recording of NPIs in Europe's second wave to allow precise modelling of NPI effectiveness. The dataset includes interventions from 114 regions in 7 European countries during the period from the 1st August 2020 to the 9th January 2021. The paper includes NPI definitions tailored to the second wave following an exploratory data collection. Each entry has been extensively validated by semi-independent double entry, comparison with existing datasets, and, when necessary, discussion with local epidemiologists. The dataset has considerable potential for use in disentangling the effectiveness of NPIs and comparing the impact of interventions across different phases of the pandemic.

Understanding the effectiveness of government interventions against the resurgence of COVID-19 in Europe.

European governments use non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to control resurging waves of COVID-19. However, they only have outdated estimates for how effective individual NPIs were in the first wave. We estimate the effectiveness of 17 NPIs in Europe's second wave from subnational case and death data by introducing a flexible hierarchical Bayesian transmission model and collecting the largest dataset of NPI implementation dates across Europe. Business closures, educational institution closures, and gathering bans reduced transmission, but reduced it less than they did in the first wave. This difference is likely due to organisational safety measures and individual protective behaviours-such as distancing-which made various areas of public life safer and thereby reduced the effect of closing them. Specifically, we find smaller effects for closing educational institutions, suggesting that stringent safety measures made schools safer compared to the first wave. Second-wave estimates outperform previous estimates at predicting transmission in Europe's third wave.

Applying Restorative Environments in the Home Office While Sheltering-in-Place.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review was to spotlight specific methods for people working from home to apply restorative environment research to improve productivity and mental health during shelter-in-place. BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to sheltering-in-place and telework. While necessary, these strategies may lead to negative consequences such as social isolation and worse performance. However, nature environments have been shown to have a variety of positive effects in several different settings, including improved attention, positive affect, and increased job satisfaction, and these may be translated to the home workspace setting. METHOD: This provides a narrative review of the environmental psychology literature, describing articles involving nature in a task performance or stress context and how it has been applied. It then moves on to discuss how these findings could possibly be applied in the context of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: Although beneficial results are mixed, the review found a variety of relatively simple and cost-effective methods that could assist workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, including taking a break in nature and implementing nature in the workspace. APPLICATION: The application of restorative environment research could be an efficient way of mitigating the negative psychological effects due to at-home sheltering and telework in order to combat COVID-19.

Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19.

Governments are attempting to control the COVID-19 pandemic with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). However, the effectiveness of different NPIs at reducing transmission is poorly understood. We gathered chronological data on the implementation of NPIs for several European and non-European countries between January and the end of May 2020. We estimated the effectiveness of these NPIs, which range from limiting gathering sizes and closing businesses or educational institutions to stay-at-home orders. To do so, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model that links NPI implementation dates to national case and death counts and supported the results with extensive empirical validation. Closing all educational institutions, limiting gatherings to 10 people or less, and closing face-to-face businesses each reduced transmission considerably. The additional effect of stay-at-home orders was comparatively small.