Rapid review of public health guidance on physical distancing in the context of COVID-19
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Guidance documents relating to physical distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic from ten countries and two international public health bodies were considered in this review. \n There was some variation in the guidance issued (across different settings) in relation to the recommended safe physical distance required to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission: \no Public health agencies in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, the United States and Canada currently recommend maintaining a physical distance of 2 metres (or 6 feet) for the general public, where possible. \no A physical distance of 1.5 metres is recommended in Switzerland and Australia. \no Public health agencies in Norway and Singapore, and the WHO, recommend maintaining a physical distance of at least 1 metre in non-healthcare settings. In some higher risk settings or activities, physical distancing of more than 1 metre is advised. The ECDC advises a physical distancing of at least 1 metre when using public transport. \no Public Health England has advised that 1 metre, in addition to risk mitigation measures, is sufficient in selected settings such as bars, restaurants, and close contact services. \no There is currently no requirement for physical distancing in New Zealand as the disease is contained. \n Physical distancing recommendations in education and childcare settings acknowledge that adhering to physical distancing measures with young children may be more challenging, but advise that physical contact should be minimised, where possible. \n In general, the guidance on physical distancing recommends that appropriate risk mitigation strategies should be implemented when physical distancing measures cannot be consistently applied. \n A limited number of frameworks have been developed to facilitate an assessment of the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in different settings. All frameworks recommend the use of additional risk mitigation strategies when safe physical distancing guidance cannot be consistently applied. \n A physical distance of within 1 to 2 metres of a confirmed case of COVID-19 was outlined in most definitions of ‘close contact’. Other considerations included the duration of exposure, the setting, the nature of the contact (that is, direct or indirect) and the timing of the contact during the clinical course of infection of the confirmed case.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.032 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".