During the COVID-19 pandemic, most governments around the world have introduced social distancing measures to reduce social interaction between people. Th ose measures could be introduced on national, regional and local levels depending on particular country. Th ey range from advice about not leaving home (self-isolation) to strict quarantine measures. Th e choice of particular measures relies on the trade-off between preserving as many lives as possible and maintaining the economic well-being of population. In this paper, we use theoretical tools to investigate which strategies are the most benefi cial in providing social welfare. Th us, we apply the "prisoner's dilemma" to model individual decision- making process regarding social distancing. We show that the decision on whether to comply or not with the quarantine regime depends on the individual preferences, as well as the losses incurred by isolation, and the likelihood of receiving necessary and timely medical care in case of illness. We draw parallels between our fi ndings and real quarantine measures that have been applied in diff erent countries. Th eoretically, we show that universal full-scale quarantine measures (total stay-home policy) cannot be considered as the most benefi cial policy from the social welfare perspective. Instead, planning strategic incentives for diff erent homogeneous population groups is a more preferable strategy.