1. Effect of specific non-pharmaceutical intervention policies on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the counties of the United States
- Author
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Bingyi Yang, Angkana T. Huang, Bernardo Garcia-Carreras, William E. Hart, Andrea Staid, Matt D. T. Hitchings, Elizabeth C. Lee, Chanelle J. Howe, Kyra H. Grantz, Amy Wesolowksi, Joseph Chadi Lemaitre, Susan Rattigan, Carlos Moreno, Brooke A. Borgert, Celeste Dale, Nicole Quigley, Andrew Cummings, Alizée McLorg, Kaelene LoMonaco, Sarah Schlossberg, Drew Barron-Kraus, Harrison Shrock, UFCOVID Interventions Team, Justin Lessler, Carl D. Laird, and Derek A. T. Cummings
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Epidemiology ,Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ,Science ,Psychological intervention ,Basic Reproduction Number ,General Physics and Astronomy ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Article ,law.invention ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Leisure Activities ,law ,Intervention (counseling) ,Pandemic ,medicine ,Disease Transmission, Infectious ,Computational models ,Humans ,030212 general & internal medicine ,Pandemics ,Health policy ,Infection Control ,Multidisciplinary ,Schools ,business.industry ,r-package ,SARS-CoV-2 ,Health Policy ,Masks ,COVID-19 ,General Chemistry ,Confidence interval ,United States ,030104 developmental biology ,Transmission (mechanics) ,Viral infection ,Quarantine ,business ,Demography ,Natural History - Abstract
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) remain the only widely available tool for controlling the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We estimated weekly values of the effective basic reproductive number (Reff) using a mechanistic metapopulation model and associated these with county-level characteristics and NPIs in the United States (US). Interventions that included school and leisure activities closure and nursing home visiting bans were all associated with a median Reff below 1 when combined with either stay at home orders (median Reff 0.97, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.58–1.39) or face masks (median Reff 0.97, 95% CI 0.58–1.39). While direct causal effects of interventions remain unclear, our results suggest that relaxation of some NPIs will need to be counterbalanced by continuation and/or implementation of others., Disentangling the impacts of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission is challenging as they have been used in different combinations across time and space. This study shows that, early in the epidemic, school/daycare closures and stopping nursing home visits were associated with the biggest reduction in transmission in the United States.
- Published
- 2021