Cyprus ranks 26th among 184 countries worldwide when it comes to strict measures taken to curb the spread of the coronavirus, according to the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT).
OxCGRT systematically collects information on several different common policy responses that governments have taken to respond to the pandemic on 18 indicators such as school closures and travel restrictions.
The data is also used to inform a Risk of Openness Index which aims to help countries understand if it is safe to ‘open up’ or whether they should ‘close down’ in their fight to tackle the coronavirus.
OxCGRT groups 19 indicators into themes of closure and containment, health and economic support, normalized to vary from 0–100.
The indicators measure the number and intensity of closure and containment policies – for example, school closings and stay-at-home measures.
As well as policies towards disease surveillance – for example, testing and contact tracing.
Only a handful of countries had adopted strong containment – often referred to as lockdown – and health policies in early March 2020, yet within one month the world had changed and intensive policy responses had become a global phenomenon.
In subsequent months, however, countries lifted policy restrictions, then, in some cases, re-imposed policies in a policy see-saw as the epidemic waxed and waned.
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