Chasing the ghost of infection past: identifying thresholds of change during the COVID-19 infection in Spain

Luis Santamaria; Joaquin Hortal

To summarize, our analyses detected three inflection points in the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain: a first phase of rapid infection, accompanied by a decrease in the mortality rate most likely related to early improvements in the detection and treatment of this novel disease; a second phase of early reduction in the infection rate, chronologically related to public response to voluntary prevention and social-distancing requests by the authorities; and a third phase of major reduction in the infection rate, following the onset of hard socialdistancing measures (nationwide lockdown and land border closure). It is also apparent that prolonged infection-to-detection and infection-to-death lags may have caused misperceptions of the impact of certain events (most notably, the 8th March demonstrations and sport events) and the effectiveness of certain measures, while being probably instrumental in triggering the widespread social response during phase 2 of the contagion. Therefore, in addition to the control measures undertaken, a more effective communication strategy that bridges the perceptual gap described could be instrumental in engaging the population into the harsh actions still necessary to fight the pandemic more efficiently.