Enacting national social distancing policies corresponds with dramatic reduction in COVID19 infection rates

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dc.citation.articleNumbere0236619
dc.citation.issueNumber7
dc.citation.journalTitlePLoS ONE
dc.citation.volumeNumber15
dc.contributor.authorMcGrail, Daniel J.
dc.contributor.authorDai, Jianli
dc.contributor.authorMcAndrews, Kathleen M.
dc.contributor.authorKalluri, Raghu
dc.date.accessioned2020-11-04T18:47:52Z
dc.date.available2020-11-04T18:47:52Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.description.abstractThe outbreak the SARS-CoV-2 (CoV-2) virus has resulted in over 6.5 million cases of COVID19, greatly stressing global healthcare infrastructure. Lacking medical prophylactic measures to combat disease spread, many nations have adopted social distancing policies in order to mitigate transmission of CoV-2. While mathematical models have suggested the efficacy of social distancing to curb the spread of CoV-2, there is a lack of systematic studies to quantify the real-world efficacy of these approaches. Here, we first demonstrate that implementation of social distancing policies in US states corresponded with a reduction in COVID19 spread rates, and that the reduction in spread rate is proportional to the average change in mobility. We validate this observation on a worldwide scale by analyzing COVID19 spread rate in 134 nations with varying social distancing policies. Globally, we find that social distancing policies significantly reduced the COVID19 spread rate, with resulting in an estimated 65% reduction (95% CI = 39–80%) in new COVID19 cases over a two week time period. These data suggest that social distancing policies may be a powerful tool to prevent spread of COVID19 in real-world scenarios.
dc.identifier.citationMcGrail, Daniel J., Dai, Jianli, McAndrews, Kathleen M., et al.. "Enacting national social distancing policies corresponds with dramatic reduction in COVID19 infection rates." <i>PLoS ONE,</i> 15, no. 7 (2020) Public Library of Science: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236619.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236619
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/109505
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherPublic Library of Science
dc.rightsThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.titleEnacting national social distancing policies corresponds with dramatic reduction in COVID19 infection rates
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.publicationpublisher version
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