The Impact of COVID-19 Management Policies Tailored to Airborne SARS-CoV-2 Transmission: Policy Analysis
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Abstract
Daily new COVID-19 cases from January to April 2020 demonstrate varying patterns of SARS-CoV-2 transmission across different geographical regions. Constant infection rates were observed in some countries, whereas China and South Korea had a very low number of daily new cases. In fact, China and South Korea successfully and quickly flattened their COVID-19 curve. To understand why this was the case, this paper investigated possible aerosol-forming patterns in the atmosphere and their relationship to the policy measures adopted by select countries.
Objective
The main research objective was to compare the outcomes of policies adopted by countries between January and April 2020. Policies included physical distancing measures that in some cases were associated with mask use and city disinfection. We investigated whether the type of social distancing framework adopted by some countries (ie, without mask use and city disinfection) led to the continual dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 (daily new cases) in the community during the study period.
Methods
We examined the policies used as a preventive framework for virus community transmission in some countries and compared them to the policies adopted by China and South Korea. Countries that used a policy of social distancing by 1-2 m were divided into two groups. The first group consisted of countries that implemented social distancing (1-2 m) only, and the second comprised China and South Korea, which implemented distancing with additional transmission/isolation measures using masks and city disinfection. Global daily case maps from Johns Hopkins University were used to provide time-series data for the analysis.
Results
The results showed that virus transmission was reduced due to policies affecting SARS-CoV-2 propagation over time. Remarkably, China and South Korea obtained substantially better results than other countries at the beginning of the epidemic due to their adoption of social distancing (1-2 m) with the additional use of masks and sanitization (city disinfection). These measures proved to be effective due to the atmosphere carrier potential of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
Conclusions
Our findings confirm that social distancing by 1-2 m with mask use and city disinfection yields positive outcomes. These strategies should be incorporated into prevention and control policies and be adopted both globally and by individuals as a method to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.20.20107763: (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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This is a limitation of this research since even if a country has adopted all the necessary measures, citizens can undermine it. But this should be considered case by case and it does not prove the results findings directly. Future research will be conducted to integrate infodemics and life course epidemiology with a mathematical …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.20.20107763: (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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This is a limitation of this research since even if a country has adopted all the necessary measures, citizens can undermine it. But this should be considered case by case and it does not prove the results findings directly. Future research will be conducted to integrate infodemics and life course epidemiology with a mathematical overview of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This is an important tool for policy making to prevent fake news and misuse of scientific information within human behavior at the individual and community scales [58,59]. These statements lead also to the evidences, reported by the number of infected at John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre [60], that not only 50 thousand, but even 20 infected individual hosts is at risk of keeping propagating the disease [42] as observed by end of March, in China and Japan, 2020. Following this recurrence pattern, another study limitation is the time at which countries were analyzed. A longer time period is essential for obtain more accurate data for the majority of variables described in Section 3. Nevertheless, statistical data presented in this research have a strong indication of social distancing fails within some countries and success for others with the additional preventive framework of masks and city disinfection. The observed asymptotic instability aspect of the statistical data of Figures 5-8, presenting lower infection rates for some countries (China and South Korea) while exponential infection rate for...
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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