Among the so-called non-pharmaceutical measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, public information campaigns and school closures were the most effective. They reduced the reproduction rate, which is the average number of people infected by an infected person, by 0.35 and 0.24, respectively. This is the result of a study conducted with the participation of the Kiel Institute, which also systematically evaluated data from outside the United States and China, including Germany. "Nevertheless, the high effectiveness of a measure does not automatically translate into a recommendation for political implementation if it has, as in the case of school closures, strong negative effects," says study author Alexander Sandkamp from the Kiel Institute.