Context: Recently, Researchers from the University of Oxford created a series of models to discover the best measures governments could use in order to keep the infection rate flat. In which Social bubbles – made up of friends and family – may be the best way to keep coronavirus contained when lockdown is lifted, study shows.
Key Points

• Amid the pandemic, there is increasing pressure on governments to ease lockdown restrictions, especially to lift economic and psychological burdens on people who have been confined to their homes, worldwide.
• Many countries have started gradually lifting restrictions even as the number of cases of the infection continues to rise.
• As a Covid-19 vaccine is still months away, questions about the methods that can be adopted to avoid the second wave of infections while easing restrictions have arisen.

About  Social Bubbles

• Social Bubbles are Micro-communities that could contain spread of COVID-19.
• The idea is based on New Zealand’s model of household “bubbles”, an exclusive social group that is allowed to meet with each other amid the pandemic.
• As per New Zealand’s model, a bubble is referred to as an individual’s household or the people that one lives with.
• People are allowed to extend their bubbles slightly to include caregivers or children who might be in shared care. These people don’t need to live in the same household, but must be local. The bubble must however be exclusive and small, the government’s advisory says.
• In case a member of the bubble develops symptoms, the entire bubble quarantines itself, preventing further spread of the infection.
• The country followed this approach during the lockdown and allowed the expansion of the bubbles as transmission slowed and restrictions eased.

How it is effective?

• The study introduces three strategies, which include contact with similar people, strengthening contact in communities and repeatedly interacting with the same people in bubbles.
• The study says that these strategies rely less on confinement and allow strategic social contact while still flattening the curve.
• With regards to social bubbles, the study says that the social bubbles should restrict interactions to just these people. This reduces the number of contact partners rather than the number of interactions.
• This strategy is in the spirit of a social contract with others, delineated by common agreement.
• Social bubbles can also be applied by employers to create departmental or work unit bubbles of employees.
• For instance, for hospitals and essential workers, the risk of transmission can be minimised by introducing shifts with a similar composition of employees.
• This could mean clubbing together employees based on their residential proximity.

Its Advantages

• Under this strategy, people could expand their household groups to include another household in the same exclusive group, in order to allow those who are isolated some more social contact.
• It could help in reducing the most harmful effects of the current social restrictions, while continuing to limit the risk of chains of transmission.
• This method would also allow some families to return to work by sharing childcare responsibilities.
• Research published by the London School of Economics and Political Science says that the concept of social bubbles proved effective for New Zealand since it allowed people who were isolated, vulnerable or struggling to receive the care and support they needed.
• Further, such a policy can be an effective policy for other countries to encourage compliance with social distancing regulations while meeting care and support needs.
• The authors of the study maintain that these micro-communities are difficult for a virus to penetrate and if in case the infection is contracted by one contact, it would be difficult for the virus to spread much further.