Switzerland's lockdown has sharply reduced the cases of COVID-19

EPFL researchers have modeled the effects of measures taken in the country to slow the spread of coronavirus. According to their estimates, the contamination rate has fallen by between 53% and 92%, depending on the canton, and people's movements have been reduced by 30% to 80%. Have the Swiss government's lockdown measures been effective in stemming the pandemic? That's the question a team of EPFL researchers set out to answer by analyzing data dating back to 28 February, the day the Swiss government banned groupings of over 1,000 people. This initial restriction was followed by a series of others that culminated in a ban on groupings of over five people, introduced on 20 March. "It's essential for policymakers to be able to quantify how effective these measures are in slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, so that they can make the right decisions for both this pandemic and future ones," says Jacques Fellay, the study's coauthor. Fellay, a medical researcher at EPFL's School of Life Sciences, also sits on the Swiss federal government's COVID-19 scientific advisory board. The team's findings have just been published in Swiss Medical Weekly .