Abstract
Public health interventions have been implemented to contain the outbreak of COVID-19 in New York City. However, the assessment of those interventions, e.g. social distancing, cloth face covering based on the real-world data from filed study is lacking. The SEIR compartmental model was used to evaluate the social distancing and cloth face covering effect on the daily culminative laboratory confirmed cases in NYC, and COVID-19 transmissibility. The latter was measured by Rt reproduction numbers in three phases which were based on two interventions in implemented in the timeline. The transmissibility decreased from phase 1 to phase 3. The Initial, R0 was 4.60 in Phase 1 without any intervention. After social distancing, the Rt value was reduced by 68%, while after the mask recommendation, it was further reduced by ~60%. Interventions resulted in significant reduction of confirmed case numbers, relative to predicted values based on SEIR model without intervention. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of social distancing and cloth face coverings in slowing down the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in NYC.
Do Stay at Home Orders and Cloth Face Coverings Control COVID-19 in New York City? Results from a SIER Model Based on Real World Data