Effectiveness of governmental strategies for managing COVID-19
A Study of the Effectiveness of Governmental Strategies for Managing Mortality from COVID-19
We investigate the effectiveness of seven government containment and policy closure interventions. Our results indicate that only school closings and public transportation closings have a persistently significant impact. Stay-at-home policies only show a significant impact after 70 days. Workplace closings, restrictions on the size of gatherings, and restrictions on internal travel show no significant impact on mortality rates. Moreover, stricter measures are not significantly associated with lower growth rates in mortality.
Policy Review and Modeling Analysis of Mitigation Measures for Coronavirus Disease Epidemic Control, Health System, and Disease Burden, South Korea
Using a discrete stochastic transmission model, we estimated that multilevel policies, including extensive testing, contact tracing, and quarantine, reduced contact rates by 90% and rapidly decreased the epidemic in Daegu and nationwide during February‒March 2020. Absence of these prompt responses could have resulted in a >10-fold increase in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths by May 15, 2020, relative to the status quo. The model suggests that reallocation of persons who have mild or asymptomatic cases to community treatment centers helped avoid overwhelming hospital capacity and enabled healthcare workers to provide care for more severely and critically ill patients in hospital beds and negative-pressure intensive care units. As small outbreaks continue to occur, contact tracing and maintenance of hospital capacity are needed.
COVID-19 pandemic spread against countries' non-pharmaceutical interventions responses: a data-mining driven comparative study
Data from the ECDC regarding the identified cases and deaths of COVID-19 from 48 countries have been used. Additionally, data concerning the NPI measures related policies implemented by the 48 countries and the capacity of their health care systems was collected manually from their national gazettes and official institutes. The data mining and clustering analysis of the collected data showed that the implementation of the NPI measures before the first death case seems to be very effective in controlling the spread of the disease. In other words, delaying the implementation of the NPI measures to after the first death case has practically little effect on limiting the spread of the disease. The success of implementing the NPI measures further depends on the way each government monitored their application. Countries with stricter policing of the measures seems to be more effective in controlling the transmission of the disease.
Comparative Study of Government Response Measures and Epidemic Trends for COVID-19 Global Pandemic
This study aims to provide a correlation analysis of the response measures adopted by countries and epidemic trends since the COVID-19 outbreak. This analysis picks 13 countries for quantitative assessment. We find a significant negative correlation between the epidemic trend characteristics and the government response measure scores given by experts through correlation analysis. More stringent government response measures correlate with fewer infections and fewer waves in the infection curves. Stringent government response measures curb the spread of COVID-19, limit the number of total infectious cases, and reduce the time to peak of total cases.
Association between City-wide Lockdown and COVID-19 Hospitalization Rates in Multigenerational Households in New York City
[Preprint.] We obtained daily age-segmented COVID-19 hospitalization counts in each of 166 ZIP code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in NYC. Among individuals over 55 years, the lockdown was associated with higher COVID-19 hospitalization rates in ZCTAs with more multigenerational households. The greatest difference occurred three weeks after lockdown: Q2 vs. Q1: 54% increase (95% Bayesian credible intervals: 22 – 96%); Q3 vs. Q1: 48%, (17 – 89%); Q4 vs. Q1: 66%, (30 – 211%). After accounting for pandemic-related population shifts, a significant difference was observed only in Q4 ZCTAs: 37% (7 –76%). By increasing house-bound mixing across older and younger age groups, city-wide lockdown mandates imposed during the growth of COVID-19 cases may have inadvertently, but transiently, contributed to increased transmission in multigenerational households.
Outcomes Associated With Social Distancing Policies in St Louis, Missouri, During the Early Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic
A model of 1.3 million residents of the greater St Louis, Missouri, area found an initial reproductive number (indicating transmissibility of an infectious agent) of 3.9 (95% credible interval [CrI], 3.1-4.5) in the St Louis region before March 15, 2020, which fell to 0.93 (95% CrI, 0.88-0.98) after social distancing policies were implemented between March 15 and March 21, 2020. By June 15, a 1-week delay in policies would have increased cumulative hospitalizations from an observed actual number of 2246 hospitalizations to 8005 hospitalizations (75% CrI: 3973-15 236 hospitalizations) and increased deaths from an observed actual number of 482 deaths to a projected 1304 deaths (75% CrI, 656-2428 deaths). The results of this decision analytical model study suggest that, in the St Louis region, timely social distancing policies were associated with improved population health outcomes, and small delays may likely have led to a COVID-19 epidemic similar to the most heavily affected areas in the US.