IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0289998.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Recommended distances for physical distancing during COVID-19 pandemics reveal cultural connections between countries

Author

Listed:
  • Dongwoo Chai
  • Layla El Mossadeq
  • Michel Raymond
  • Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo

Abstract

During COVID-19 pandemic several public health measures were implemented by diverse countries to reduce the risk of COVID-19, including social distancing. Here we collected the minimal distance recommended by each country for physical distancing at the onset of the pandemic and aimed to examine whether it had an impact on the outbreak dynamics and how this specific value was chosen. Despite an absence of data on SARS-CoV-2 viral transmission at the beginning of the pandemic, we found that most countries recommended physical distancing with a precise minimal distance, between one meter/three feet and two meters/six feet. 45% of the countries advised one meter/three feet and 49% advised a higher minimal distance. The recommended minimal distance did not show a clear correlation with reproduction rate nor with the number of new cases per million, suggesting that the overall COVID-19 dynamics in each country depended on multiple interacting factors. Interestingly, the recommended minimal distance correlated with several cultural parameters: it was higher in countries with larger interpersonal distance between two interacting individuals in non-epidemic conditions, and it correlated with civil law systems, and with currency. This suggests that countries which share common conceptions such as civil law systems and currency unions tend to adopt the same public health measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Dongwoo Chai & Layla El Mossadeq & Michel Raymond & Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo, 2023. "Recommended distances for physical distancing during COVID-19 pandemics reveal cultural connections between countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(12), pages 1-16, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0289998
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289998
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289998
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289998&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0289998?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sohee Kwon & Amit D. Joshi & Chun-Han Lo & David A. Drew & Long H. Nguyen & Chuan-Guo Guo & Wenjie Ma & Raaj S. Mehta & Fatma Mohamed Shebl & Erica T. Warner & Christina M. Astley & Jordi Merino & Ben, 2021. "Association of social distancing and face mask use with risk of COVID-19," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qian Huang, 2024. "Spatial, temporal, and demographic nonstationary dynamics of COVID-19 exposure among older adults in the U.S," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(8), pages 1-18, August.
    2. Pereira, Jefferson Doglas da Silva & dos Santos, Anderson Moreira Aristides, 2022. "Socioeconomic factors associated with hospital deaths due to COVID-19 in Brazil," Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos, Associação Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos (ABER), vol. 16(1), pages 141-161.
    3. Bruno Arpino & Valeria Bordone & Giorgio Di Gessa, 2022. "Close kin influence COVID-19 precautionary behaviors and vaccine acceptance of older individuals," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2022_02, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0289998. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.