Don’t wait, re-escalate: delayed action results in longer duration of COVID-19 restrictions
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Non-pharmaceutical public health interventions have significant economic and social costs, and minimizing their duration is paramont. Assuming that interventions are sufficient to reduce infection prevalence, we use a simple linear SIR model with case importation to determine the relationship between the timing of restrictions, duration of measures necessary to return the incidence to a set point, and the final size of the outbreak. The predictions of our linear SIR model agree well with COVID-19 data from Atlantic Canada, and are consistent with the predictions of more complex deterministic COVID-19 models. We conclude that earlier re-escalation of restrictions results in shorter disruptions, smaller outbreaks, and consequently, lower economic and social costs. Our key message is succinctly summarized as ‘don’t wait, re-escalate’ since delaying re-escalation of restrictions results in not only more infections, but also longer periods of restrictions.
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.04.20226316: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Finally, while the effective reproduction number, Rt, has become a popular method for communicating epidemic trends, this metric has limitations, including that Rt is a lagged measure since the number of secondary infections generated per infected person can only be known after that person recovers, or by making assumptions …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.04.20226316: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Finally, while the effective reproduction number, Rt, has become a popular method for communicating epidemic trends, this metric has limitations, including that Rt is a lagged measure since the number of secondary infections generated per infected person can only be known after that person recovers, or by making assumptions via the method of nowcasting [2]. By contrast, the exponential growth rates, λ1, and λ2 are instantaneous measures, and can be easily communicated as doubling times or halving times. As an alternative to Rt, we suggest estimating λ1, λ2 and m1, as shown in Figure 3, using Equation 1a to predict the future time course of the epidemic, and using Equation 4 to communicate the likely duration of restrictions shortly after they have been enacted. Our key message is succinctly summarized by the phrase ‘Don’t wait, re-escalate’ as coined by Christina Bancej of the Public Health Agency of Canada. We find that delaying re-escalation of restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 results in not only more infections, but also longer periods of restrictions. As such, we recommend not waiting to enact restrictions.
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.
-
