This study showed that a series of multifaceted public health interventions was temporally associated with improved control of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China.
In this cohort study of 32,538 confirmed COVID-19 infections, researchers evaluated the association of public health interventions with epidemiological features of the outbreak in Wuhan. The interventions including cordons sanitaire, traffic restriction, social distancing, home confinement, centralized quarantine, and universal symptom survey.
The interventions applied changed over time. The periods were:
- December 8 to January 9 (no intervention)
- January 10 to 22 (massive human movement due to the Chinese New Year holiday)
- January 23 to February 1 (cordons sanitaire, traffic restriction and home quarantine)
- February 2 to 16 (centralized quarantine and treatment), and
- February 17 to March 8 (universal symptom survey).
The daily confirmed case rate peaked in the third period and declined afterward. The daily confirmed case rate was always higher in local health care workers than in the general population. The effective reproduction number fluctuated above 3.0 before January 26, decreased to below 1.0 after February 6, and decreased further to less than 0.3 after March 1.
