IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pmed00/1003244.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social distancing to slow the US COVID-19 epidemic: Longitudinal pretest–posttest comparison group study

Author

Listed:
  • Mark J Siedner
  • Guy Harling
  • Zahra Reynolds
  • Rebecca F Gilbert
  • Sebastien Haneuse
  • Atheendar S Venkataramani
  • Alexander C Tsai

Abstract

Background: Social distancing measures to address the US coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic may have notable health and social impacts. Methods and findings: We conducted a longitudinal pretest–posttest comparison group study to estimate the change in COVID-19 case growth before versus after implementation of statewide social distancing measures in the US. The primary exposure was time before (14 days prior to, and through 3 days after) versus after (beginning 4 days after, to up to 21 days after) implementation of the first statewide social distancing measures. Statewide restrictions on internal movement were examined as a secondary exposure. The primary outcome was the COVID-19 case growth rate. The secondary outcome was the COVID-19-attributed mortality growth rate. All states initiated social distancing measures between March 10 and March 25, 2020. The mean daily COVID-19 case growth rate decreased beginning 4 days after implementation of the first statewide social distancing measures, by 0.9% per day (95% CI −1.4% to −0.4%; P

Suggested Citation

  • Mark J Siedner & Guy Harling & Zahra Reynolds & Rebecca F Gilbert & Sebastien Haneuse & Atheendar S Venkataramani & Alexander C Tsai, 2020. "Social distancing to slow the US COVID-19 epidemic: Longitudinal pretest–posttest comparison group study," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(8), pages 1-12, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pmed00:1003244
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003244
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003244&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003244?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Health > Distancing and Lockdown > Effect on Health

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Badruddoza, Syed & Amin, Modhurima Dey, 2023. "Impacts of Teaching Modality on U.S. COVID-19 Spread in Fall 2020 Semester," Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 5(1), January.
    2. Long Chu & R. Quentin Grafton & Tom Kompas & Mary-Louise McLaws, 2023. "Effects of Closures and Openings on Public Health in the Time of COVID-19: A Cross-Country and Temporal Trend Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, November.
    3. Juyoung Song & Dal-Lae Jin & Tae Min Song & Sang Ho Lee, 2023. "Exploring Future Signals of COVID-19 and Response to Information Diffusion Using Social Media Big Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(9), pages 1-11, May.
    4. Matthew Spiegel & Heather Tookes, 2021. "Business Restrictions and COVID-19 Fatalities [The immediate effect of COVID-19 policies on social distancing behavior in the United States]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5266-5308.
    5. Herby, Jonas & Jonung, Lars & Hanke, Steve, 2022. "A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality – II," Studies in Applied Economics 210, The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.
    6. Ali Hadianfar & Razieh Yousefi & Milad Delavary & Vahid Fakoor & Mohammad Taghi Shakeri & Martin Lavallière, 2021. "Effects of government policies and the Nowruz holidays on confirmed COVID-19 cases in Iran: An intervention time series analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(8), pages 1-11, August.
    7. Gearhart, Richard & Michieka, Nyakundi & Anders, Anne, 2023. "The effectiveness of COVID deaths to COVID policies: A robust conditional approach," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 376-394.
    8. Caixia Wang & Huijie Li, 2022. "Public Compliance Matters in Evidence-Based Public Health Policy: Evidence from Evaluating Social Distancing in the First Wave of COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(7), pages 1-13, March.
    9. Tanmoy Bhowmik & Sudipta Dey Tirtha & Naveen Chandra Iraganaboina & Naveen Eluru, 2021. "A comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 transmission and mortality rates at the county level in the United States considering socio-demographics, health indicators, mobility trends and health care infras," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-15, April.
    10. Charles Courtemanche & Joseph Garuccio & Anh Le & Joshua Pinkston & Aaron Yelowitz, 2021. "Chance elections, social distancing restrictions, and KENTUCKY’s early COVID-19 experience," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(7), pages 1-19, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pmed00:1003244. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosmedicine (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.