Social distancing a week earlier could’ve prevented 36,000 COVID-19 deaths, study says
By mid-March, states began lockdown measures and enforced social distancing to try to slow the spread of COVID-19. But what if they had implemented those same policies a week earlier?
Epidemiologists from Columbia University sought to find that answer and published their findings in a new study.
The researchers used infectious disease modeling to analyze the spread of the coronavirus from March 15 — around when the bulk of lockdown orders had been issued and people began staying home — until May 3 in 3,142 counties. They simulated undocumented and documented cases, tracked transmission in every county and movement between the counties, and analyzed how the virus spread by looking at the deaths over seven weeks.
Researchers say they found the effects of social distancing interventions if they had been implemented earlier by pushing the sequence of transmission and ascertainment rates — or “the fraction of infections documented as confirmed cases” — for March 15 to May 3 back by one and two weeks, to March 8 and March 1.
The simulations found that had social distancing policies been put in place one week earlier on March 8, 703,975 confirmed coronavirus cases and 35,927 deaths could’ve been avoided nationwide by May 3. In New York, 209,987 cases and 17,514 deaths could’ve been avoided if the policies were implemented a week earlier, according to the research.
If strict social distancing measures began on March 1, researchers say the US would have had 960,937 fewer confirmed cases of coronavirus and 53,990 fewer deaths, according to their study.
There are more than 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. and more than 93,000 deaths as of May 21, according to Johns Hopkins University.
White House spokesman Judd Deere told The Washington Post in response to the study that officials made “the best decisions possible” with what they knew at the time.
“What would have saved lives is if China had been transparent and the World Health Organization had fulfilled its mission,” Deere told The Washington Post. “What did save American lives is the bold leadership of President Trump.”
The White House told people March 16 to avoid groups of more than 10 and for older people to stay home on March 16, CNN reported. The Trump administration also restricted travel to China starting on January 31, according to The New York Times.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a stay-at-home order to take effect on March 22, The Guardian reported.
“It’s a big, big difference,” Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and the leader of the research team, told The New York Times. “That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths.”
The majority of U.S. states have begun to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns in some capacity and cases keep going up as people go back to everyday life, The New York Times reported.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said before Congress last week that reopening too quickly could lead to “some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery,” according to The New York Times.
Another study from the University of Kentucky, Georgia State University and University of Louisville analyzed the effectiveness of different social distancing measures and found bar and restaurant closures and shelter-in-place orders had the most impact on slowing COVID-19 cases.
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 11:36 AM with the headline "Social distancing a week earlier could’ve prevented 36,000 COVID-19 deaths, study says."