163925 20251113160752.0 doi 10.1017/dap.2021.25 sideral 146084 ART-2021-146084 eng Starnini, Michele Impact of data accuracy on the evaluation of COVID-19 mitigation policies 2021 Evaluating the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial to maximize the epidemic containment while minimizing the social and economic impact of these measures. However, this endeavor crucially relies on surveillance data publicly released by health authorities that can hide several limitations. In this article, we quantify the impact of inaccurate data on the estimation of the time-varying reproduction number$ R(t) $, a pivotal quantity to gauge the variation of the transmissibility originated by the implementation of different NPIs. We focus on Italy and Spain, two European countries among the most severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. For these two countries, we highlight several biases of case-based surveillance data and temporal and spatial limitations in the data regarding the implementation of NPIs. We also demonstrate that a nonbiased estimation of$ R(t) $could have had direct consequences on the decisions taken by the Spanish and Italian governments during the first wave of the pandemic. Our study shows that extreme care should be taken when evaluating intervention policies through publicly available epidemiological data and call for an improvement in the process of COVID-19 data collection, management, storage, and release. Better data policies will allow a more precise evaluation of the effects of containment measures, empowering public health authorities to take more informed decisions. Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/E36-20R info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/101003688/EU/Epidemic intelligence to minimize 2019-nCoV’s public health, economic and social impact in Europe/EpiPose This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No H2020 101003688-EpiPose info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO-FEDER/FIS2017-87519-P info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.es info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Aleta, Alberto (orcid)0000-0002-1192-8707 Tizzoni, Michele Moreno, Yamir Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0002-0895-1893 2004 405 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Física Teórica Área Física Teórica 3 (2021), e28 [10 pp.] Data & policy 523805 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/163925/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 1894585 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/163925/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:163925 articulos driver 2025-11-13-14:57:58 ARTICLE