Differential impact of non-pharmaceutical public health interventions on COVID-19 epidemics in the United States

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-60056/v1

Abstract

The widespread pandemic of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses an unprecedented global health crisis. In the United States (US), different state governments have adopted various combinations of non-pharmaceutical public health interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the epidemic from February to April, 2020. Quantitative assessment on the effectiveness of NPIs is in great need to assist in guiding the individualized decision making for adjustment of interventions in the US and around the world. However, the impact of these approaches remain uncertain. Based on the reported cases, the effective reproduction number of COVID-19 epidemic for 50 states in the US was estimated. The measurement on the effectiveness of eight different NPIs was conducted by assessing risk ratios (RRs) between

 and NPIs through a generalized linear model (GLM). Different NPIs were found to have led to different levels of reduction in

. Stay-at-home contributed approximately 51% (95% CI 46%-57%), gathering ban (more than 10 people) 19% (14%-24%), non-essential business closure 16% (10%-21%), declaration of emergency 13% (8%-17%), interstate travel restriction 11% (5%-16%), school closure 10% (7%-13%), initial business closure 10% (6%-14%), and gathering ban (more than 50 people) 6% (2%-11%). This retrospective assessment of NPIs on

 has shown that NPIs played critical roles on epidemic control in the US in the past several months. The quantitative results could guide individualized decision making for future adjustment of NPIs in the US and other countries for COVID-19 and other similar infectious diseases.

Full Text

This preprint is available for download as a PDF.