Social distancing, wearing face masks and handwashing should continue alongside vaccines to protect people from Covid-19, experts have suggested.
Researchers made the conclusions after analysing studies that assessed the effectiveness of global public health measures in reducing rates of Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission and Covid-19 mortality.
The peer-reviewed paper, which has been published in the British Medical Journal, examined 72 studies, of which 35 evaluated individual public health measures and 37 assessed multiple public health measures.
Of the 35 studies of individual measures, 34 were observational and one was a randomised controlled trial. They were carried out in Asia, the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America