Effect of emergency declaration for the COVID-19 outbreak in Tokyo, Japan in the first two weeks

  1. Junko Kurita
  2. Tamie Sugawara
  3. Yasushi Ohkusa

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Abstract

Background

Japan’s Prime Minister Abe declared an emergency to control the COVID-19 outbreak on April 7, 2020. He asked almost half of the population of Japan to reduce their personal contacts by 70–80%.

Object

This study estimates the effectiveness of that emergency declaration. Method: We applied a simple susceptible–infected–recovery model to data of patients with symptoms in Tokyo, Japan for January 14 – April 21 as of April 22. We estimate the reproduction number in four periods: R 0 before voluntary event cancellation and school closure (VECSC) which was introduced since February 27 to March 19, R v during the VECSC, R a after VECSC, and R e after the emergency declaration.

Results

Results suggest that the value of R 0 was estimated as 1.267; its range was [1.214, 1.341]. However, R v was estimated as 2.360 [1.844, 2.623]. R a was estimated as 2.307 [2.035, 2.794] and R e was 0.462 [0.347, 0.514].

Discussion and Concussion

One must be reminded that these results reflect only those at two weeks after the emergency declaration. The reproduction number probably changed thereafter continuously.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.16.20067447: (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: 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.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.16.20067447v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.16.20067447v1 on medRxiv