Preliminary evaluation of voluntary event cancellation as a countermeasure against the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan as of 11 March, 2020

  1. Yoshiyuki Sugishita
  2. Junko Kurita
  3. Tamie Sugawara
  4. Yasushi Ohkusa

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Abstract

Background

To control COVID-19 outbreak in Japan, sports and entertainment events were canceled in Japan for two weeks from 26 February to 11 March. It has been designated as voluntary event cancellation (VEC).

Object

This study predicts the effectiveness of VEC enduring and after its implementation.

Method

We applied a simple susceptible–infected–recovery model to data of patients with symptoms in Japan during 14 January to VEC introduction and after VEC introduction to 8 March. We adjusted the reporting delay in the latest few days.

Results

Results suggest that the basic reproduction number, R 0, before VEC introduced as 2.50 with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was [2.43, 2.55] and the effective reproduction number, R v, after VEC introduced as 1. 88; its 95% CI was [1.68,2.02].

Discussion and Conclusion

Results demonstrated that VEC can reduce COVID-19 infectiousness by 35%, but R 0 remains higher than one.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.12.20035220: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    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.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    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.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.12.20035220 on medRxiv