Covid-19: Algeria

Policy Measures: Effective or ineffective

Introduction

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. It began spreading in earnest in the early 2020’s and has led to a global crisis of never-seen before proportions. People are being forced to stay indoors to reduce risk of exposure and spread of the disease.

Algeria, a country in the Northern part of Africa has also had to endure this crisis.

This blog post is aimed at investigating how the government has battled the crisis and whether the circuit-breaker measures actually did what they were supposed to.

Data Description

Data sets used in this report come from two main sources -

1. Collection of the COVID-19 data maintained by Our World in Data.
2. COVID-19 Government Measures Dataset by ACAPS.

It contains a collection of data with 62 variables for COVID-19 dataset. The data is available from 2020-02-25 to 2021-08-27 upon filtering for Algeria. The data sets are then filtered to select only the appropriate variables. Out of 62 variables in the COVID-19 dataset, only 5 were selected while 8 out of the 18 variables in the government measures dataset were selected. These tables are then merged together using the full join technique to get our final working dataset.

Descriptions of variables

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789

Variables <chr>	Description <chr>
date	Date values
new_cases	New cases recorded on date
new_deaths	New deaths recorded on date
MEASURE	Measures types and categories
COMMENTS	Description of measure taken with further details

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Numerical Summary Statistics

Two variables of the dataset new_cases and new_deaths show a large range of values that need to be analysed. The summary of their distribution statistics is visible in the table below -

Summary Statistics

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789

Variables <chr>	Mean <dbl>	SD <dbl>	Maximum.Value <dbl>
new_cases	354.035599	312.89990	1927
new_deaths	9.593023	7.43483	49

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Effect of Policy Measures

The below table gives an opportunity to take a look at the various policy measures taken by the government of Algeria over the pandemic and see whether those have borne fruit. The sparkline plots display the occurrence of new cases and deaths on a daily basis for 2 weeks post the measure being taken.

The period of two weeks is taken as a supposed period for measures as this period has been termed as a circuit breaker.

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Effect of Policy Measures

Line plots display the statistics for daily cases and deaths for 2 weeks post measure undertaken.

Date	Measures Undertaken	New Cases	Trend	Daily Deaths	Trend

Date	Measures Undertaken	New Cases	Trend	Daily Deaths	Trend
2020-03-05	Awareness campaigns
2020-03-12	Schools closure
2020-03-12	Limit public gatherings
2020-03-12	Border checks
2020-03-16	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-03-17	Border closure
2020-03-17	Border closure
2020-03-18	Isolation and quarantine policies
2020-03-20	International flights suspension
2020-03-20	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-03-20	Awareness campaigns
2020-03-22	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-03-23	Full lockdown
2020-03-23	Curfews
2020-03-23	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-03-23	Military deployment
2020-03-23	Partial lockdown
2020-03-23	Checkpoints within the country
2020-03-27	Curfews
2020-04-01	International flights suspension
2020-04-01	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-04-01	Full lockdown
2020-04-01	Limit public gatherings
2020-04-01	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-04-01	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-04-02	International flights suspension
2020-04-05	Curfews
2020-04-05	Partial lockdown
2020-04-05	Partial lockdown
2020-04-18	Curfews
2020-04-24	Partial lockdown
2020-04-24	Full lockdown
2020-04-24	Curfews
2020-04-24	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-04-25	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-04-27	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-04-28	Schools closure
2020-05-03	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-05-07	Requirement to wear protective gear in public
2020-05-11	International flights suspension
2020-05-13	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-05-13	Curfews
2020-05-23	Curfews
2020-05-23	Requirement to wear protective gear in public
2020-05-23	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-05-23	Partial lockdown
2020-05-28	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-05-28	Curfews
2020-05-28	Partial lockdown
2020-06-01	International flights suspension
2020-06-07	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-06-14	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-06-14	Curfews
2020-06-27	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-06-27	International flights suspension
2020-06-28	Border closure
2020-07-10	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-07-17	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-07-17	Curfews
2020-07-17	Partial lockdown
2020-07-26	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-07-26	Partial lockdown
2020-07-26	Curfews
2020-07-26	Partial lockdown
2020-07-26	Emergency administrative structures activated or established
2020-07-26	Curfews
2020-08-09	Requirement to wear protective gear in public
2020-08-09	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-08-09	International flights suspension
2020-08-09	Curfews
2020-08-09	Border closure
2020-08-09	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-08-09	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-08-09	Schools closure
2020-08-09	Curfews
2020-08-15	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-09-01	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-09-01	Partial lockdown
2020-09-01	Curfews
2020-09-01	Curfews
2020-09-01	Changes in prison-related policies
2020-09-02	Economic measures
2020-09-06	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-09-15	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-09-22	Economic measures
2020-10-01	Partial lockdown
2020-10-01	Partial lockdown
2020-10-01	Curfews
2020-10-01	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-10-01	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-10-01	Limit public gatherings
2020-10-01	Isolation and quarantine policies
2020-10-04	Schools closure
2020-10-14	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-10-14	Border closure
2020-10-16	Economic measures
2020-10-25	Awareness campaigns
2020-10-31	Curfews
2020-10-31	Curfews
2020-11-03	Strengthening the public health system
2020-11-09	Domestic travel restrictions
2020-11-09	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-11-09	Schools closure
2020-11-09	Emergency administrative structures activated or established
2020-11-10	Curfews
2020-11-10	Curfews
2020-11-10	Curfews
2020-11-13	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-11-17	Curfews
2020-11-17	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-11-17	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-11-17	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-11-17	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-11-22	Awareness campaigns
2020-11-29	Strengthening the public health system
2020-12-01	Economic measures
2020-12-02	Limit public gatherings
2020-12-02	Curfews
2020-12-02	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-12-02	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-12-02	Closure of businesses and public services
2020-12-06	Domestic travel restrictions
	Emergency administrative structures activated or established

While we don’t see clear evidence of these measures being completely successful in every case, here are some generalizations that can be gathered -

1. Partial Lockdowns have been held more often and are more likely to act as a circuit breaker than a full lockdown. 2/3 Full lockdowns have been unsuccessful. Partial lockdowns, international flights suspension and limiting public gatherings have a 50% chance of success. These also have lower economic impact so except for dire circumstances, they seem like a better choice to take.
2. Requirement to wear protective gear in public has seen positive results in 2/3 cases which seems to indicate that masks-on is one of the best strategies.
3. Economic measures have borne fruit in 3/4 cases and showed a downward trend.
4. Domestic travel restrictions have shown success in 4/7 cases. Limiting mobility seems to be a more effective strategy than completely shutting it down.
5. Closing schools has not seemed to help either as there was only one registered decline in cases post that out of the 5 instances in which the action was taken. A similar outcome is seen in the case of -

-    Border checks and closures
-    Closure of businesses and public services
-    Awareness campaigns
-    Curfews

6. Isolation and Quarantine policies seem to have no effect in impeding the spread of the disease.
7. Algeria has even seen military deployment and checkpoints within the country to impede the spread. While it does display a momentary sharp decline in this case, the overarching trend is that the value at the end of two weeks for daily cases was still higher than the first day.

Conclusions

From the above table and data it is visible that none of the measures can be described as a resounding and monumental success. Further exploration is needed to check whether combinations of the more successful measures out of these would be able to succeed in a more complete fashion in combating the spread of the virus.

Improvements

The following improvements can be made to the blog post -

1. The measures can be factored in a weighted manner for a more appropriate result.
2. The actual duration that these measures lasted is not given and might be necessary to make a more correct judgement as to why these circuit breakers may not have given the results that were expected from.

Citations

Hasell, J., Mathieu, E., Beltekian, D. et al. A cross-country database of COVID-19 testing. Sci Data 7, 345 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00688-8

Covid-19 government measures dataset. ACAPS. (2020, December 10). https://www.acaps.org/covid-19-government-measures-dataset.

Gallagher, J. (2020, November 20). Covid: What is a circuit-breaker could one fight the virus? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54206582.

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