Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

March 23, 2020

The Effectiveness of Social Distancing in Mitigating COVID-19 Spread: a modelling analysis

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  • By adapting an established simulation model based on the infection history of individual cases, the authors find that application of 4 social distancing interventions (school closure, workplace non-attendance, increased case isolation and community contact reduction) is highly effective in flattening the epidemic curve.
  • These interventions were found to be effective even 10 weeks after the first index cases. The most effective intervention was increasing case isolation to 100% of children and 90% of adults. 
  • While effective, these interventions are highly disruptive to society and creates challenges for government officials, who need to consider what the population can sustain.   

Milne & Xie (Mar 21, 2020). The Effectiveness of Social Distancing in Mitigating COVID-19 Spread: a modelling analysis. Pre-print downloaded Mar 23 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.20.20040055