Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19

How to hold down transmission Early in 2020, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission was curbed in many countries by imposing combinations of nonpharmaceutical interventions. Sufficient data on transmission have now accumulated to discern the effectiveness of individual interventions. Brauner et al. amassed and curated data from 41 countries as input to a model to identify the individual nonpharmaceutical interventions that were the most effective at curtailing transmission during the early pandemic. Limiting gatherings to fewer than 10 people, closing high-exposure businesses, and closing schools and universities were each more effective than stay-at-home orders, which were of modest effect in slowing transmission. Science, this issue p. eabd9338 The effect of nonpharmaceutical interventions on SARS-CoV-2 transmission during the early phase of the pandemic is quantified. INTRODUCTION Governments across the world have implemented a wide range of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Given the increasing death toll of the pandemic and the social cost of some interventions, it is critical to understand their relative effectiveness. By considering the effects that interventions had on transmission during the first wave of the outbreak, governments can make more-informed decisions about how to control the pandemic. RATIONALE Rigorously studying the effectiveness of individual interventions poses considerable methodological challenges. Simulation studies can explore scenarios, but they make strong assumptions that may be difficult to validate. Data-driven, cross-country modeling comparing the timing of national interventions to the subsequent numbers of cases or deaths is a promising alternative approach. We have collected chronological data on the implementation of several interventions in 41 countries between January and the end of May 2020, using independent double entry by researchers to ensure high data quality. Because countries deployed different combinations of interventions in different orders and with different outcomes, it is possible to disentangle the effect of individual interventions. We estimate the effectiveness of specific interventions with a Bayesian hierarchical model by linking intervention implementation dates to national case and death counts. We partially pool NPI effectiveness to allow for country-specific NPI effects. Our model also accounts for uncertainty in key epidemiological parameters, such as the average delay from infection to death. However, intervention effectiveness estimates should only be used for policy-making if they are robust across a range of modeling choices. We therefore support the results with extensive empirical validation, including 11 sensitivity analyses under 206 experimental conditions. In these analyses, we show how results change when we vary the data, the epidemiological parameters, or the model structure or when we account for confounders. RESULTS While exact intervention effectiveness estimates varied with modeling assumptions, broader trends in the results were highly consistent across experimental conditions. To describe these trends, we categorized intervention effect sizes as small, moderate, or large, corresponding to posterior median reductions in the reproduction number R of <17.5%, between 17.5 and 35%, and >35%, respectively. Across all experimental conditions, all interventions could robustly be placed in one or two of these categories. Closing both schools and universities was consistently highly effective at reducing transmission at the advent of the pandemic. Banning gatherings was effective, with a large effect size for limiting gatherings to 10 people or less, a moderate-to-large effect for 100 people or less, and a small-to-moderate effect for 1000 people or less. Targeted closures of face-to-face businesses with a high risk of infection, such as restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, had a small-to-moderate effect. Closing most nonessential businesses delivering personal services was only somewhat more effective (moderate effect). When these interventions were already in place, issuing a stay-at-home order had only a small additional effect. These results indicate that, by using effective interventions, some countries could control the epidemic while avoiding stay-at-home orders. CONCLUSION We estimated the effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission in 41 countries during the first wave of the pandemic. Some interventions were robustly more effective than others. This work may provide insights into which areas of public life require additional interventions to be able to maintain activity despite the pandemic. However, because of the limitations inherent in observational study designs, our estimates should not be seen as final but rather as a contribution to a diverse body of evidence, alongside other retrospective studies, simulation studies, and experimental trials. Median intervention effectiveness estimates across a suite of 206 analyses with different epidemiological parameters, data, and modeling assumptions. Bayesian inference using a semimechanistic hierarchical model with observed national case and death data across 41 countries between January and May 2020 is used to infer the effectiveness of several nonpharmaceutical interventions. Although precise effectiveness estimates depend on the assumed data and parameters, there are clear trends across the experimental conditions. Violins show kernel density estimates of the posterior median effectiveness across the sensitivity analysis. Rt, instantaneous reproduction number. Governments are attempting to control the COVID-19 pandemic with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). However, the effectiveness of different NPIs at reducing transmission is poorly understood. We gathered chronological data on the implementation of NPIs for several European and non-European countries between January and the end of May 2020. We estimated the effectiveness of these NPIs, which range from limiting gathering sizes and closing businesses or educational institutions to stay-at-home orders. To do so, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model that links NPI implementation dates to national case and death counts and supported the results with extensive empirical validation. Closing all educational institutions, limiting gatherings to 10 people or less, and closing face-to-face businesses each reduced transmission considerably. The additional effect of stay-at-home orders was comparatively small.