Page 14 - IJPS-11-5

International Journal of
Population Studies Human behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic

Table 3. Infection probabilities associated with a 43% (95% CI: 29–57%) reduction in
COVID-related hospital admissions in Liverpool during
Number of people Probability of at least one the United Kingdom national lockdown from November
person having COVID (%)
10 33 06 to December 03, 2020 (Zhang et al., 2022).
20 56 Contact tracing was only effective when case rates
30 71 were low, testing was high, and the population was
compliant, for example, South Korea. Due to the terribly
40 80 botched CDC test development effort, the US did not
50 87 have effective testing until mid-March 2020, and some
states did not have enough tests until June 2020. Low test
Table 4. Techniques to avoid infection availability, high case rates, and the difficulty of getting
some people to take tests made contact tracing useless
Technique Negative consequences in the US. Due to the high US case rates, the George
Border closures Impeded worker movement and people returning Washington University Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for
home Health Workforce Equity contact tracing estimator
Testing and Before rapid antigen tests, polymerase chain estimated the US would have needed 1,250,000 people in
contact tracing reaction tests were difficult to get and often took the contact tracing workforce in September 2020 to be
too long to provide an actionable result
Glasses or goggles Goggles are uncomfortable, and some can fog up effective. A very clever use of testing was the US’s Test
to Treat program. If one tested positive, one could find
Face masks Masks are uncomfortable, interfere with a pharmacy from a website where s/he could get a free
recognition, and increase the chance of bacterial
infection due to the warm, moist environment COVID antiviral such as Paxlovid.
created by the face masks Other forms of testing were used for special purposes.
Social distancing It interfered with all aspects of daily life, for example, Pooled testing, when the samples of many people are mixed
socialization, shopping, eating out, and working together, could, for example, determine if someone in a
School closures They reduced learning, caused isolation, college dorm was infected. If so, individual testing could
increased myopia, and increased body mass determine the infected individual. Wastewater testing was
index used to provide some indication of COVID case rates when
Lockdowns They significantly interfered with all aspects of home testing replaced lab testing. It started as a pandemic
daily life and led to extreme isolation
novelty and is now widely used around the world, for
example, in Zambia and Ethiopia. Van Beusekon (2023)
bacteria. PCR testing is highly sensitive and can detect reported that more than 70 countries and 3,500 sites report
small amounts of genetic material. In PCR testing, a nose COVID wastewater data to a global dashboard.
or throat sample is sent to a lab. One receives the test result
as early as 24 h after the test, but it took several days when There were other forms of less frequently used tests,
case rates were high and testing capacity was low. While for example, dog sniffing. As the pandemic progressed,
PCR tests provided insights into case rates, their delayed many next-generation tests were developed, enhancing
existing tests or analyzing different properties such as lipid
results often precluded their use for behavior modification. levels, sweat, or breath. These innovations used different
South Korea, with its excellent, widely deployed camera measurement technologies such as magnetic nanoparticles,
face recognition technology, excellent test availability, and smart toilets, and smartphones. Some were wearable, such
a compliant population, used PCR testing in its world-class as face masks capable of performing on-the-go testing.
contact tracing system to control viral spread.
In contrast, the rapid antigen test is an at-home, 6.2.2.3. Glasses or goggles
personally administered test with results returned in There is a wide range of results on the impact of wearing
about 20 min. It detects the presence of the N protein, glasses and goggles. Li et al. (2020) reported a much lower
is quite accurate, and has yet to be affected by variants. COVID-19 rate for those who wore glasses for 8 h a day.
It is used for determining if it was safe to visit friends or They speculated that the glasses reduced the hand-to-face
relatives, whether people could board an airplane or enter touching and thus reduced the chance of infection. The
a country, if people should take an antiviral, and who study included 276 patients hospitalized with COVID-19
should be isolated in a nursing home, prison, college, or in Suizhou, China. The proportion of daily eyeglasses
passenger ship. Their widespread use reduced COVID wearers who were infected with COVID-19 was much
cases, and the introduction of community testing was lower than that of the local population (5.8% vs. 31.5%).

Volume 11 Issue 5 (2025) 8 https://doi.org/10.36922/IJPS025110040