Estimating the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 transmission in the Netherlands.

ABSTRACT: During the COVID-19 pandemic non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were taken to mitigate virus spread. Assessing their effectiveness is essential in policy support but often challenging, due to interactions between measures, the increase of immunity, variant emergence and seasonal effects. These factors make results difficult to interpret over a long period of time. Using a mechanistic approach, we estimate the overall effectiveness of sets of NPIs in reducing transmission over time. Our approach quantifies the effectiveness by comparing the observed effective reproduction number, which is the number of secondary infections caused by a typical infected person, to a counterfactual reproduction number if no NPIs were taken. The counterfactual reproduction number accounts for seasonal vari

SUBMITTER: Backer JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12459772 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature