Effect of mitigation measures on the spreading of COVID-19 in hard-hit states in the U.S

State government-mandated social distancing measures have helped to slow the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Many of the current predictive models of the development of COVID-19, especially after mitigation efforts, partially rely on extrapolations from data collected in other...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPloS one Vol. 15; no. 11; p. e0240877
Main Authors Tam, Ka-Ming, Walker, Nicholas, Moreno, Juana
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 03.11.2020
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Astronomy
Asymptomatic
Basic Reproduction Number - prevention & control
Betacoronavirus - pathogenicity
Biology and Life Sciences
Casualties
Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology
Coronavirus Infections - transmission
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Disease control
Disease transmission
Epidemics
Fatalities
Humans
Infection control
Infections
Medicine and Health Sciences
Methods
Mitigation
Mortality
Pandemics
People and places
Physics
Pneumonia, Viral - epidemiology
Pneumonia, Viral - transmission
Population
Prediction models
Prevention
Psychological Distance
Public health administration
Quarantine
SARS-CoV-2
Shelter in place
Social distancing
United States
United States - epidemiology
United States
Louisiana
New York
Baton Rouge Louisiana
United States > US
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Summary:State government-mandated social distancing measures have helped to slow the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Many of the current predictive models of the development of COVID-19, especially after mitigation efforts, partially rely on extrapolations from data collected in other countries. Since most states enacted stay-at-home orders towards the end of March, the resulting effects of social distancing should be reflected in the death and infection counts by the end of April. Using the data available through April 25th, we investigate the change in the infection rate due to the mitigation efforts and project death and infection counts through September 2020 for some of the most heavily impacted states: New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Louisiana. We find that with the current mitigation efforts, five of those six states have reduced their base reproduction number to a value less than one, stopping the exponential growth of the pandemic. We also project different scenarios after the mitigation is relaxed.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0240877