October 7, 2020

State-Level Needs for Social Distancing and Contact Tracing to Contain COVID-19 in the United States

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

Keywords (Tags): non-pharm interventions

• A modeling study estimated that during the shelter-in-place period (11 April–29 May 2020), most US states and the District of Columbia maintained the SARS-CoV-2 effective reproduction number below 1. Following relaxations of social-distancing measures, by 22 July 2020, 42 states and the District of Columbia had >75% probability of a rebound period of increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Curtailing the epidemic in this scenario with testing and isolation would require at least a 3.5-fold increase in coverage of these mitigation measures. An addition of contact-tracing coverage of 50–75% would be required to prevent epidemic rebound with full societal reopening.

Chiu et al. (Oct 6, 2020). State-Level Needs for Social Distancing and Contact Tracing to Contain COVID-19 in the United States. Nature Human Behaviour.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00969-7