Harnessing behavioural science in public health campaigns to maintain ‘social distancing’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: key principles

摘要

Coronovirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), like Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), is an infection arising from a coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in recent times in terms of the global spread of infection and the resultant morbidity, mortality and burden on health systems. In the absence of a vaccine, reducing transmission of the COVID-19 virus requires rapid and extensive behaviour change to enact protective behaviours and ‘social distancing’ across whole populations. Although ‘social distancing’ is the current most used term, it actually refers to maintaining by reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other across whole populations. Social distancing applies regardless of infection status and is thus distinctive from quarantine or the isolation of those with suspected or diagnosed infection, which is also an important element of infection control.