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Top1. Introduction
After the first novel coronavirus infection case was detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 (Zhu et al., 2020), the virus widely and rapidly spread across the world, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020 (Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020). Since then, the pandemic has become the most serious challenge for human societies and has negatively affected the world’s healthcare and financial systems (McKibbin & Fernando, 2020). By May 20, 2021, more than 165 million confirmed cases and 3.4 million deaths were reported globally (WHO Coronavirus Disease [COVID-19] Dashboard, 2021).
To slow down the spread of the virus and relieve health systems, health authorities adopted clinical practices, such as applying robust testing programs and, lately, speeding up vaccination. In addition, government authorities enforced physical nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and measures, such as mask-wearing, social distancing, quarantines, and lockdowns. However, applying these measures for long periods of time have social and economic consequences, such as high unemployment rates and bankruptcy (Policy Brief, 2020).
Kuwait started to suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic after its first infection case was detected on February 24, 2020. Since then, the government of Kuwait has enforced several precautionary measures, including banning flights; closing workplaces, schools, and shopping malls; and applying total and partial lockdowns. As of May 20, 2021, Kuwait reported 295,861 confirmed infections, 281,920 recovered cases, and 1,711 deaths (WHO Coronavirus Disease [COVID-19] Dashboard, 2021).
Several studies have shown that interventions considered by health and government authorities are important and effective in controlling previous outbreaks (Leach, 2008; World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations & United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 2012; Funk et al. 2017; Turner et al., 2020; Bernal et al., 2017). The interrupted time series (ITS) study design was widely and successfully used in some of these studies (Turner et al., 2020; Bernal et al., 2017). Several research studies used various statistical techniques to explore the impact of government precautionary measures on the spread of COVID-19 in different countries, such as China (Al-Rousan & Al-Najjar, 2020), the UK (Ferguson et al., 2020), the US (Ferguson et al., 2020), Taiwan (Hsieh et al., 2020), Bahrain (Al Dallal et al., 2021), and Kuwait (Almeshal et al., 2020). These studies considered the pandemic at its early stage when its trajectory had a single wave. Therefore, it is not clear whether the same techniques are still applicable for analyzing current pandemic trajectories that contain multiple waves. In addition, the study of the case in Kuwait (Almeshal et al., 2020) only considered government precautionary measures enforced during the early pandemic days.