ABSTRACT
As the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread, the world’s governments activated pandemic control policies that were founded on enhanced personal hygiene measures and limiting the amount of person-to-person contact. Measures included compulsory closures of many public and private spaces in which people were most likely to interact. These measures proved essential in a setting where no tried-and-tested clinical or pharmaceutical interventions were available. Lessons learned from previous pandemics provided insights into how effective different measures of this kind could be. Evidence from the Spanish flu pandemic that spread across the world 100 years earlier than the COVID-19 outbreak showed that suites of interventions (or “lockdowns”) could be effective when deployed skilfully in slowing the spread of a new viral disease. Studies of US cities that deployed lockdowns showed that measures such as school closures, bans on mass gatherings and quarantining of those who were symptomatic could be effective Further analyses also showed how important the timing of interventions can be. Lessons learned from later pandemics enabled the World Health Organization to develop a model for the management of public health crises. This backdrop indicated that, despite many blaming their struggles to cope on the lack of advance knowledge about the new virus, there was actually plentiful research evidence that quite a lot was already known about management of pandemics before the 2020 outbreak.
