Stay-at-Home Policy: Is it a Case of Exception Fallacy? An Internet-Based Ecological Study

Background: A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission. Our objective was to verify if staying at home reduced COVID-19 mortality rates. Methods: In this ecological study, data from www.google.com/covid19/mobility/ , ourworldindata.org and covid.saude.gov.br were combined. Countries with >100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥67 were included. Data were preprocessed and analyzed using the difference between number of deaths/million between 2 regions and the difference between the percentage of staying at home. Analysis was performed using linear regression and residual analysis. Findings: After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3,741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis. Only 63 (1·6%) comparisons were significant. Interpretation: With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34.Funding Statement: No funding.Declaration of Interests: All authors have no conflict of interest.