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File image of a man with a face covering walking down a near empty Henry Street in Dublin during Covid restrictions. Alamy Stock Photo
covid pandemic
Strong link between public’s behaviour to mitigate Covid-19 and daily case figures, report shows
The ESRI also noted that ‘perceptions of how much others were complying with restrictions mattered too’.
3.19pm, 25 Feb 2025
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THERE WAS A “strong” link during the pandemic between efforts the Irish public undertook to mitigate the risk of Covid-19 infection and the number of new daily cases that were reported.
That’s according to a new report from the ESRI on the lessons that can be learned from the Covid pandemic on “promoting a nationwide collective response” from future pandemics or emergencies.
The report analysed data from the Social Activity Measure (SAM), which was collected fortnightly over an 18-month period from January 2021 to June 2022.
SAM adapted the Day Reconstruction Method, which asks people to record their behaviour from the previous day in detail, as well as their perceptions of the pandemic and attitudes towards it.
The study was done online and anonymously, to a nationally representative sample of 1,000 people every two weeks.
It found that behaviours to mitigate the risk of Covid infection were “strongly associated with the contemporaneous number of new daily cases of COVID-19”.
The report stated that the link to daily case numbers was stronger than with other indicators, such as hospitalisations and deaths, even after the vaccine became available.
The ESRI said that this “close relationship between behaviour and the COVID-19 case numbers confirms that putting accurate, numeric indications of risk into the public domain can strongly influence the public response”.
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“In future emergencies, where possible, the publication of a number linked to the scale of a threat is likely to be similarly impactful,” said the ESRI.
Meanwhile, the ESRI noted that cooperation with mitigation measures during the pandemic was largely voluntary, “with only a limited role for legal deterrents”.
However, it added that “voluntary collective action on this scale needs to be coordinated by the policy and communication that surrounds it”.
The ESRI further stated that in emergencies, rules need to be “simple and straightforward” and that they should be “consistently applied and communicated”.
“Straightforward, explicit rules are also easier to self-police and to observe in others, making cooperation more likely”, said the ESRI.
While the ESRI said there was fatigue with sticking to the public health guidelines as the pandemic wore on, it noted that more important was whether the restrictions were viewed as “coherent rather than contradictory”.
It added that “perceptions of how much others were complying with restrictions mattered too”.
The degree to which others were perceived to be complying with the rules influenced behaviour to a greater extent than the “likelihood of being caught and fined were they to break restrictions”.
“Voluntary willingness to do the right thing mattered more than deterrence,” said the ESRI.
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