ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Mapping social distancing measures to the reproduction number for COVID-19.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions as implemented in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic: a rapid review.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission: rapid review of evidence from Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China.Frontiers in public health · 2024Pooled it
- Measures implemented in the school setting to contain the COVID-19 pandemicThe Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Ethical considerations in infectious disease modelling for public health policy: the case of school closures.Interface focus · 2025Article
- Improving the accuracy of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) incidence estimates among hospitalised adults in Bristol, UK.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- The next viral pandemic-where do we stand?Folia microbiologica · 2025Review
- Bottom-Up Communication Approach for Effective Implementation of the One Health Initiative in Ethiopia.F1000Research · 2025Review
- Targeted vaccination is effective for mpox clade Ib in England despite increased household transmission: Predictions from a modelling study.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce COVID-19 transmission in the UK: a rapid mapping review and interactive evidence gap map.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2024Review
- Predicting norovirus and rotavirus resurgence in the United States following the COVID-19 pandemic: a mathematical modelling study.BMC infectious diseases · 2023Article
- Characterisation of infection-induced SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence amongst children and adolescents in North Carolina.Epidemiology and infection · 2023Article
- Voluntary risk mitigation behaviour can reduce impact of SARS-CoV-2: a real-time modelling study of the January 2022 Omicron wave in England.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- The spread of infectious diseases from a physics perspective.Biology methods & protocols · 2023Article
- Occupational inequalities in the prevalence of COVID-19: A longitudinal observational study of England, August 2020 to January 2021.PloS one · 2023Observational
- Instantaneous reproduction number and epidemic growth rate for predicting COVID-19 waves: the first 2 years of the pandemic in Spain.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Estimation of reproduction numbers in real time: Conceptual and statistical challenges.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society) · 2022Article
- On the use of the reproduction number for SARS-CoV-2: Estimation, misinterpretations and relationships with other ecological measures.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society) · 2022Article
- An assessment of the vaccination of school-aged children in England against SARS-CoV-2.BMC medicine · 2022Article
- Quantifying pupil-to-pupil SARS-CoV-2 transmission and the impact of lateral flow testing in English secondary schools.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Efficacy versus abundancy: Comparing vaccination schemes.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In the absence of a vaccine, severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission has been controlled by preventing person-to-person interactions via social distancing measures. In order to re-open parts of society, policy-makers need to consider how combinations of measures will affect transmission and understand the trade-offs between them. We use age-specific social contact data, together with epidemiological data, to quantify the components of the COVID-19 reproduction number. We estimate the impact of social distancing policies on the reproduction number by turning contacts on and off based on context and age. We focus on the impact of re-opening schools against a background of wider social distancing measures. We demonstrate that pre-collected social contact data can be used to provide a time-varying estimate of the reproduction number (
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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.