July 13, 2020

Estimating the Effect of Social Distancing Interventions on COVID-19 in the United States

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

• [pre-print, not peer-reviewed] Modeling of state-level interventions to control COVID-19 indicates that only school closures and lockdowns have a non-trivial impact on effective reproductive numbers. Olney et al. use an established semi-mechanistic Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate the effect of state-level interventions on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the US. Infection fatality is parameterized for each state using state-level age distributions. All interventions that targeted the general population were evaluated, including instructions to isolate and practice social distancing, school closures, banning of sporting events and public gatherings, and lockdown. The model was fit from 30 days before the state experienced 7 deaths, up to April 25.  

Olney et al. (July 11, 2020). Estimating the Effect of Social Distancing Interventions on COVID-19 in the United States. Pre-print downloaded July 13 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.10.20151001