  During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries have taken the approach of
tiered restrictions which has remained a point of debate due to a lack of
transparency. Using the dominance-based rough set approach, we identify
patterns in the COVID-19 data pertaining to the UK government's tiered
restrictions allocation system. These insights from the analysis are translated
into "if-then" type rules, which can easily be interpreted by policy makers.
The differences in the rules extracted from different geographical areas
suggest inconsistencies in the allocations of tiers in these areas. We found
that the differences delineated an overall north south divide in England,
however, this divide was driven mostly by London. Based on our analysis, we
demonstrate the usefulness of the dominance-based rough sets approach for
investigating the fairness and explainabilty of decision making regarding
COVID-19 restrictions. The proposed approach and analysis could provide a more
transparent approach to localised public health restrictions, which can help
ensure greater conformity to the public safety rules.
