ArticlePloS one2020
Enacting national social distancing policies corresponds with dramatic reduction in COVID19 infection rates.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 145 citations in OpenAlex.
- The methodologies to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions during COVID-19: a systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Effectiveness of public health measures in reducing the incidence of covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and covid-19 mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2021Pooled it
- Effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical public health interventions against COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2021Pooled it
- Article
- Public sentiment dynamics in policy transitions: a sentiment analysis based on Weibo data.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Article
- The impact of community nucleic acid testing on infection in residential compounds during a city-wide lockdown.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- A Saliva-Based Serological and Behavioral Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Prevalence in Howard County, Maryland.Microbiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Real-time forecasting of COVID-19 spread according to protective behavior and vaccination: autoregressive integrated moving average models.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Stay close, but not too close: aerial image analysis reveals patterns of social distancing in seal colonies.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Does Widespread Use of Hydroxychloroquine Reduce the Transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19? An Ecological Correlational Study.Infectious disorders drug targets · 2023Article
- The coevolution of the spread of a disease and competing opinions in multiplex networks.Chaos, solitons, and fractals · 2023Article
- Perspectives on user engagement of satellite Earth observation for water quality management.Technological forecasting and social change · 2023Article
- Measuring social resilience in cities: An exploratory spatio-temporal analysis of activity routines in urban spaces during Covid-19.Cities (London, England) · 2023Article
- Gradual Recovery of Building Plumbing-Associated Microbial Communities after Extended Periods of Altered Water Demand during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Environmental science & technology · 2023Article
- Mask Adherence and Social Distancing in Houston, TX from January to April 2021.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Observational
- Influence of Information Blocking on the Spread of Virus in Multilayer Networks.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Non-Pharmacologic Interventions in COVID-19 Pandemic Management; a Systematic Review.Archives of academic emergency medicine · 2023Review
- Article
- Headache-related clinical features in teleworkers and their association with coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The outbreak the SARS-CoV-2 (CoV-2) virus has resulted in over 6.5 million cases of COVID19, greatly stressing global healthcare infrastructure. Lacking medical prophylactic measures to combat disease spread, many nations have adopted social distancing policies in order to mitigate transmission of CoV-2. While mathematical models have suggested the efficacy of social distancing to curb the spread of CoV-2, there is a lack of systematic studies to quantify the real-world efficacy of these approaches. Here, we first demonstrate that implementation of social distancing policies in US states corresponded with a reduction in COVID19 spread rates, and that the reduction in spread rate is proportional to the average change in mobility. We validate this observation on a worldwide scale by analyzing COVID19 spread rate in 134 nations with varying social distancing policies. Globally, we find that social distancing policies significantly reduced the COVID19 spread rate, with resulting in an estimated 65% reduction (95% CI = 39-80%) in new COVID19 cases over a two week time period. These data suggest that social distancing policies may be a powerful tool to prevent spread of COVID19 in real-world scenarios.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.