A Two-Day Workweek During the Coronavirus Lockdown Has Been Proposed—But How Realistic Is That?

Academics at an Israeli research institute have suggested that, in order to balance the public health and economic concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, heavily-impacted societies could allow people to work as normal on two days of the week and lockdown for the remainder.

But others say the modeling that underpins this proposal is too optimistic about the potential spread of a new strain of coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19 and has claimed thousands of lives worldwide, and would not work.

The global economy is facing a deep recession and mass job losses because of the pandemic. Strict measures such as lockdowns and quarantines are in place across the world to suppress the spread of infection and prevent health services from becoming overwhelmed.

Professor Uri Alon, a systems biologist of the Weizmann Institute of Science, a university in Rehovot, Israel, published on Medium a piece of analysis authored by himself and his doctoral students Omer Karin and Yael Korem, and computer engineer Boaz Dudovich.

Using some of the research currently available about the coronavirus pandemic, Alon and his team suggest that "a weekly cycle of 2 work days and 5 lockdown days can keep the infection load low while allowing a sustainable, albeit reduced, economy. It can eradicate the virus without reaching herd immunity, thus preventing a large number of deaths."

"By 'work' we mean release from lockdown with strict hygiene on the same two weekdays for everyone. This release from lockdown is for the entire population, except for quarantined infected individuals and people in risk groups who may be in quarantine," they added.

"The cyclic schedule may prevent many people from being fired or put on leave without pay, instead offering them a 40 percent position (2 out of 5 normal work days). This has economic and psychological benefits."

Dr. Peter Drobac, director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, said his problem with their conclusion "is that it could give oxygen to those who are still not taking this pandemic seriously enough."

"In settings where there is already widespread community transmission and steep rises in cases and deaths, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that immediate and aggressive action to suppress the epidemic curve is essential," Drobac told Newsweek.

"That means widespread testing with isolation and contact tracing where possible. In most cases, it also means a shutdown.

"Take the U.S., which just officially became the epicenter of the global pandemic. Tinkering with the workweek right now would be akin to reshuffling deck chairs on Leo and Kate's cruise ship. The U.S. needs a proper nationwide shutdown, at least for a time," Drobac said.

Alon told Newsweek he views the proposal "as an exit strategy from a few weeks of full lockdown. Gradually rebuild the economy with a two-day workweek. If things get better, go to three days and so on. If they get worse again, you can always rerun to lockdown.

"The point is you are giving millions of unemployed people a 40 percent job. That has huge psychological and economic benefits."

Stephanie Spielman, assistant professor in biological sciences at New Jersey's Rowan University, specializes primarily in protein evolution, but she has conducted research in virus evolution and frequently collaborated with epidemiologists, and is therefore "relatively an expert in virus outbreak modeling."

Spielman said Alon is "an absolute expert in systems biology, but he is not strictly an epidemiologist and does not primarily conduct research in that field," and as such, like her, may "miss some more nuanced aspects that other more domain-specific experts would identify."

Alon told Newsweek his team "have now consulted with several leading epidemiologists" and that their idea "seems to be sound."

"The main pushback was what if infection is very quick so that it doesn't matter if it's two days with a workmate or five days," Alon said.

"It turns out that COVID infection rate per person is slow on average (although there can be rare rapid infections), that's why an infectious person in lockdown does not typically infect all of their household members in the three-day infectious period."

Spielman told Newsweek that Alon's model is "a nice idea overall" but "very simplistic and very cursory...It makes some strong assumptions and does not examine how robust the model is when these assumptions are incorrect."

However, Spielman said it is important to note that "in times like we are in now, simple and cursory models are not a bad thing. They allow for concepts, ideas, perspectives to disseminate among the scientific community quickly to spur more development.

"But because they are more simplistic than what you would get out of a multi-year study on models, they tend to 'skim' over many aspects that would be important to consider for public use and policy application."

Drobac, a global health physician and an expert on health systems, said the assumptions beneath the Weizmann modeling are "overly optimistic" and agreed that the model is "fairly simplistic."

The key figure of "R₀" is the average number of people an infected person infects. It is important to push that below 1 so that someone with the new coronavirus is infecting, on average, fewer than one person. This would eventually lead to the end of the epidemic.

"In their report, the authors manage to get the R₀ to 0.9. In other words, just barely below 1," Drobac told Newsweek.

"That assumes that their guesses are all exactly right and that everything is implemented perfectly in the much messier real world. There is no margin for error. If they are even slightly off, the R₀ moves above 1 and the epidemic grows."

Drobac said one of the assumptions in Alon's model is that R₀ is 2.4 on the two days a week that people are working as normal and there is no social distancing.

Alon's analysis states: "Hygiene measures will be required to keep R from rising beyond 2.4 during the work days as people may compensate for the lockdown period by having more social connections and hence more infectivity.

"During days of lockdown, public spaces can be disinfected to reduce infection through surfaces. Extensive testing can be used in parallel, and further reduce average R."

Drobac said 2.4 "has been a commonly cited figure, mostly based on data from China, though many models I've seen use a range of values (2.2–2.6)."

He pointed to a comment by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London, who has led the modeling work at his institution in research used by the British and American governments as they manage their coronavirus response.

Ferguson wrote on Twitter yesterday that "our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought."

"If he is right, and the R₀ is even 2.5, Alon's model likely fails," Drobac told Newsweek.

Spielman also argued that 2.4 is low. "Imagine social dynamics: The 2.4 estimate he uses is based off of our current understanding of R₀, which occurred in the context of a five day work week with two day weekends and no strong social distancing," she said.

"If we swap the 2/5 days as a society, my naive guess is that population density would be much higher than usual. People would be so happy to finally be out in public two days out of the week that many more people might congregate, beyond our baseline expectations.

"Really, any ideas for what R₀ would be in the context of a two-day workweek are complete guesses, because R₀ depends on a) the virus itself, b) population density, c) environment/weather, d) social norms, and much more.

"We fundamentally don't have a good idea what the R₀ would be for a two-day work week because the social dynamic is different from a five-day workweek."

Drobac said another "very optimistic" assumption is the R₀ of 0.3 for the five days in lockdown.

"They cited an Imperial study for this assumption, but I couldn't find it. The only time I've seen an estimate of 0.3 was for the Wuhan lockdown," Drobac said, and pointed to the roadblocks, street patrols, and strict isolation measures it took in Wuhan to reach that figure.

"Then compare with what's happening in the West. It's just not the same. I do not believe that the current social distancing measures in place anywhere in Europe, U.K., U.S., are as effective in reducing the R₀ as China was in Wuhan," Drobac told Newsweek.

"Let's say we get it down to 0.5 for those five days per week. Again, Alon's model fails, and the epidemic grows."

In the analysis published by Alon, his team suggests that "if the estimated parameters are off or change over time, so that this strategy fails, one will observe an exponential rise in cases, and one can switch to a 1 day work/6 day lockdown schedule or full lockdown."

Alon told Newsweek his team "tested a range of parameters and a range of simulation models, ranging from simple to very detailed. In all of the models, realistic ranges for parameters (R up to 3 and above) all show that there is a strategy that can balance the economy and suppress COVID.

"It's usually a two-work/five-lockdown strategy, sometimes four-work/10 lockdown is better. If you add a moderate amount of testing, it works even better, for an extremely wide range of parameters. I am careful to say that these are models, and there may always be unknowns. But it's as good as models go."

Spielman concluded that "a 'standard' epidemiological model was performed to examine a really interesting idea of two-day workweek effect. The model is a very good starting point but needs much more investigation before even considering it as a policy recommendation.

"Again, this does not mean throw out the model—it means the model is a solid baseline that suggests 'this two-day work week might be a neat thought,' which can hopefully spur more rigorous assessment of the concept."

Drobac told Newsweek that where "Alon's idea gets interesting is on the other side of the epidemic peak. We will need to figure out how to get society and the economy working again while preventing a second surge in cases. But how?

"This is exactly what China is facing right now. They were able to contain the epidemic, but it required unprecedented social and economic sacrifice. Now they are experimenting with a careful, phased normalization.

"Limited workweeks, in conjunction with other measures, might be an effective way to begin the recovery. Most countries are, unfortunately, far from that point. But it's worthy of further study."