Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) has been supporting the European Commission in multidisciplinary areas to understand the COVID-19 emergency, anticipate its impacts, and support contingency planning. This activity forms part of a broader effort by JRC to contribute through crisis coordination mechanisms with the detection, monitoring and analysis of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The website provided an overview of the monitoring in the area of the 34 UCPM Participating States plus Switzerland, related to:
- sub-national data (admin level 1) on numbers of contagious and fatalities by COVID-19, collected directly from the National Authoritative sources (National monitoring websites, when available);
- containment measures adopted by National Authorities to reduce transmission of COVID-19, daily updated.
Both information are crucial to further developing and assessing epidemiologic models for forecasting caseloads in different containment and exit scenarios, to support the National Authorities and to build a European response to COVID-19. Moreover, the sub-national granularity of the data allows to have a fit-for-purpose model to early capture the local spread and response to the COVID-19 .
Many different measures and different combinations of measures have been implemented in EU Member States and countries worldwide. It is a priority task in the fight against COVID-19 to learn about the benefits of different measures, and crucial to design a coordinated exit strategy for the European Union.
For this scope, a set of main containment measures has been identified (such as school closure, restriction of national and international movements etc.). The result is a dynamic database updated on a daily basis per Member State carried out by JRC.
It relies on a systematic data collection on the main preventive measures implemented in 35 Countries, the 34 European Civil Protection Mechanism (EUCPM) Participating States plus Switzerland, collected from the National Authoritative sources. This database is also currently used in the model for forecasting caseloads in different containment and exit scenarios.
The key areas for the database monitoring and the related analysis include a focus on:
- Social distancing
- International and national mobility
- Accessibility to primary goods and services
Under the above mentioned categories, 6 main governmental measures to contain spreading of the Covid-19 infection are considered as of today in JRC database, for each of them a dropdown option of maximum 3 replies is given.The following main measures have been taken into account since 17th March 2020:
- Schools/University closure: opening status of the educational institutions at national or sub-national level (e.g. admin level 1, when available)
- National movement restrictions: internal movements within the State
- International movement restrictions: movements across States
- Flight restrictions: international flights cancellation
- Not essential shops closure: closure of the shops, shopping malls and others not included in the following list: grocery stores, pharmacies, chemists, banks, post offices, petrol stations, newsstands.
- Events stop: Status of public events (sport, concerts, etc.). The size of the event, where possible, is detailed in the note (eg. for some countries: + 500; for others + 1,000; ...). As a result of the application of all the considered measures (except flight restrictions), as mandatory and at national level, a status of “Lockdown” is assigned to the considered Country.
Contributors: Agnes Hegedus, Alessandro Annunziato, Andrea Gerhardinger, Annett Wania, Blagoj Delipetrev, Caroline Gasparro, Chiara Fonio, Chiara Proietti, Didem Turk, Filip Sabo, Francisco Rios Diaz, Gustav Eklund, Ines Joubert-Boitat, Jacob Monster, Jon Swen, Marzia Santini, Jurgena Kamberaj, Karmen Poljansek, Kinga Brzostowska, Marco Mastronunzio, Marzia Santini, Matina Halkia, Milan Kalas, Montserrat Marin Ferrer, Niall McCormick, Pamela Probst, Paola Rufolo, Paulo Barbosa, Petar Vojnović, Peter Spruyt, Sara Grubanov Boskovic, Thomas Kemper, Tiberiu Antofie, Tomas Harmatha, Tracy Durrant, Valerio Salvitti.