April 8, 2020

Social distancing to slow the U.S. COVID-19 epidemic: interrupted time-series analysis

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Public Health Policy and Practice

• Siedner et al report that current statewide social distancing measures applied from March 10 to March 27 were effective in reducing the mean daily COVID-19 growth rate. A decline of 0.8% per day was attributed to this effort during this period, corresponding to an increase in doubling time of the epidemic from 3.3 days (before) to 5.0 days. The authors, however, warn of over relying on this data due to potential bias and confounding, and underestimation of social distancing due to spillovers across neighboring states.

Siedner et al. (April 2020). Social distancing to slow the U.S. COVID-19 epidemic: interrupted time-series analysis. Pre-print downloaded Apr 7 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.03.20052373