INTRODUCTION

The spread of COVID-19 started at the end of 2019 in Wuhan province of China. The relevant authority hardly controlled the spread of the disease due to the virus being new and infected via the breath, the non-availability of vaccine, the lack of enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the non-availability of adequate testing facilities, including the inadequate hospitalization facilities, such as limited numbers of available beds in hospitals for the patients. The lack of these facilities led to ineffective control of the pandemic. The new daily infected cases in Cambodia, a seven-day rolling average, was 528 (ABVC, 2021). Some strategies were carried out by the authorities in the infected areas to control the transmission of the virus. Those strategies were social distancing (including reducing public transportation, closing schools, banning funerals and weddings, and keeping people out of the streets), wearing masks, a centralized quarantine system, curfew, and lockdown. During the period of the pandemic, lockdown in the infected areas, even though it had a substantial adverse economic impact, was considered one of the most popular policies, generally carried out by government authorities in some countries, such as China and other European nations, such as Italy, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom that the level of infection was very high at the start of the pandemic in the early of 2020.

The government must predict the level of infection of the COVID-19 disease all over the country when it reaches the peak or turning point. To define the turning point of the total infection rate, the SIR model is employed to simulate three observed variables: Susceptible, infected, and recovery or deceased. The simulation of the model can be carried out by estimating two parameters: Contact rate and recovery rate. This chapter further tried to investigate the effectiveness of potential strategies, including curfew, lockdown, vaccination, and social distancing policy, which the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) can employ to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. A multiple regression model is used between total infected cases and the four policies that have just been mentioned. The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) is applied in producing the sample parameters.

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