A recent work indicates that temporarily splitting larger populations into smaller groups can efficiently mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus. The fact that, soon afterward, the two million people Slovenia was the first European country proclaiming the end of COVID-19 epidemic within national borders may be relevant from this perspective. Motivated by this evolution, in this paper the time dynamics of coronavirus cases in Slovenia is investigated with emphasis on how efficient various containment measures act to diminish the number of COVID-19 infections. Noteworthily, the present analysis does not rely on any speculative theoretical assumption; it is solely based on raw epidemiological data. Out of the results presented here, the most important one is perhaps the finding that, while imposing drastic curfews and travel restrictions reduce the infection rate κ by a factor of four with respect to the unrestricted state, they only improve the κ-value by ≈15% as compared to the much bearable state of social and economic life wherein wearing face masks and social distancing rules are enforced/followed. Significantly for behavioral and social science, our analysis may reveal an interesting self-protection instinct of the population, which became manifest even before the official lockdown enforcement.

中文翻译：

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我们可以从斯洛文尼亚 COVID-19 流行病的时间演变中学到什么？

最近的一项研究表明，暂时将较大的人群分成较小的群体可以有效地减轻 SARS-CoV-2 病毒的传播。从这个角度来看，不久之后，200 万人口的斯洛文尼亚成为第一个在国界内宣布结束 COVID-19 流行病的欧洲国家这一事实可能与此相关。在这种演变的推动下，本文研究了斯洛文尼亚冠状病毒病例的时间动态，重点是各种遏制措施如何有效地减少 COVID-19 感染的数量。值得注意的是，目前的分析不依赖于任何推测性的理论假设；它完全基于原始流行病学数据。在这里展示的结果中，最重要的可能是发现，虽然实施严厉的宵禁和旅行限制使感染率 κ 相对于不受限制的状态降低了四倍，但与戴脸的社会和经济生活的可忍受状态相比，它们仅将 κ 值提高了约 15%强制/遵守口罩和社交距离规则。对行为科学和社会科学而言意义重大的是，我们的分析可能揭示了人们一种有趣的自我保护本能，这种本能甚至在官方实施封锁之前就已经显现出来。