Effects of voluntary event cancellation and school closure as countermeasures against COVID-19 outbreak in Japan
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
To control the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan, sports and entertainment events were canceled and schools were closed throughout Japan from February 26 through March 19. That policy has been designated as voluntary event cancellation and school closure (VECSC).
Object
This study assesses VECSC effectiveness based on predicted outcomes.
Methods
A simple susceptible–infected–recovered model was applied to data of patients with symptoms in Japan during January 14 through March 26. The respective reproduction numbers for periods before VECSC (R 0 ), during VECSC (R e ), and after VECSC (R a ) were estimated.
Results
Results suggest R 0 before VECSC as 2.534 [2.449, 2.598], R e during VECSC as 1.077 [0.948, 1.228], and R a after VECSC as 4.455 [3.615, 5.255].
Discussion and conclusion
Results demonstrated that VECSC can reduce COVID-19 infectiousness considerably, but after VECSC, the value of the reproduction number rose to exceed 4.0.
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.19.20037945: (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
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We used Matlab 2014a to code the model as explained above. Matlabsuggested: (MATLAB, RRID:SCR_001622)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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This study has some limitations. The first is that even though we evaluated VECSC, the respective effects of voluntary event cancellation and school closure cannot be discerned. To distinguish their respective effects, one …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.19.20037945: (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
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We used Matlab 2014a to code the model as explained above. Matlabsuggested: (MATLAB, RRID:SCR_001622)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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This study has some limitations. The first is that even though we evaluated VECSC, the respective effects of voluntary event cancellation and school closure cannot be discerned. To distinguish their respective effects, one would have to develop a model with several age classes. School closure mainly affects contact patterns among schoolchildren; voluntary event cancellation mainly affects patterns among adults. Therefore, studies of those respective age groups might elucidate the separate effects of these policies. That stands as a challenge for our future study. The second point is underascertainment. Although the epidemic curves of COVID-19 in all countries are subject to underascertainment, it might be very difficult to evaluate the degree to which they are affected. It might bias the estimation result. A third point is a lack of estimation of the outcomes such as dead or severe cases or necessary medical resources for the care of COVID-19 patients. We particularly examined how policies affect the reproduction number under countermeasures. Therefore, we ignored prediction of the entire course of the outbreak and its outcomes such as the number of deaths. Nevertheless, outcomes are expected to be a primary concern for modelling. Moreover, the collapse of medical services can be expected to engender worse outcomes even if the reproduction number remains unchanged. Prediction of the effects of severe policies including lockdowns is anticipated as a challenge to be addressed i...
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.
-
-
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.19.20037945: (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
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We used Matlab 2014a to code difference equations for estimation, as explained above. Matlabsuggested: (MATLAB, SCR_001622)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).
About SciScore
SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore is not a substitute …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.19.20037945: (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
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We used Matlab 2014a to code difference equations for estimation, as explained above. Matlabsuggested: (MATLAB, SCR_001622)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).
About SciScore
SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore is not a substitute for expert review. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers) in the manuscript, and detects sentences that appear to be missing RRIDs. SciScore also checks to make sure that rigor criteria are addressed by authors. It does this by detecting sentences that discuss criteria such as blinding or power analysis. SciScore does not guarantee that the rigor criteria that it detects are appropriate for the particular study. Instead it assists authors, editors, and reviewers by drawing attention to sections of the manuscript that contain or should contain various rigor criteria and key resources. For details on the results shown here, please follow this link.
-
-