Late Surges in COVID-19 Cases and Varying Transmission Potential Partially Due to Public Health Policy Changes in 5 Western States, March 10, 2020, to January 10, 2021

  1. Xinyi Hua
  2. Aubrey R.D. Kehoe
  3. Joana Tome
  4. Mina Motaghi
  5. Sylvia K. Ofori
  6. Po-Ying Lai
  7. Sheikh Taslim Ali
  8. Gerardo Chowell
  9. Anne C. Spaulding
  10. Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

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Abstract

Objective:

This study investigates the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission potential in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho from March 2020 through January 2021.

Methods:

Time-varying reproduction numbers, R t , of a 7-d-sliding-window and of non-overlapping-windows between policy changes were estimated using the instantaneous reproduction number method. Linear regression was performed to evaluate if per-capita cumulative case-count varied across counties with different population size or density.

Results:

The median 7-d-sliding-window R t estimates across the studied region varied between 1 and 1.25 during September through November 2020. Between November 13 and 18, R t was reduced by 14.71% (95% credible interval, CrI, [14.41%, 14.99%]) in North Dakota following a mask mandate; Idaho saw a 1.93% (95% CrI [1.87%, 1.99%]) reduction and Montana saw a 9.63% (95% CrI [9.26%, 9.98%]) reduction following the tightening of restrictions. High-population and high-density counties had higher per-capita cumulative case-count in North Dakota on June 30, August 31, October 31, and December 31, 2020. In Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, there were positive correlations between population size and per-capita weekly incident case-count, adjusted for calendar time and social vulnerability index variables.

Conclusions:

R t decreased after mask mandate during the region’s case-count spike suggested reduction in SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

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  1. Version published to 10.1017/dmp.2022.248
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.04.21259992: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

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    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

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    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.04.21259992v1 on medRxiv