New York — A new study from the University of Rochester and Cornell University shows social distancing is working to slow the spread of coronavirus — but won’t stop it.
WHEC reports researchers at the two Upstate New York colleges released results this week showing that social distancing reduced the rate at which confirmed COVID-19 cases doubled in all but three U.S. states. Research began in mid-March, before non-essential business were closed and stay-at-home orders were issued in most states.
“There was a significant reduction in the spread of the disease. The bad news is it doesn’t help as much as you would hope,” Aaron Wagner, who led the research at Cornell, told WHAM.
According to their findings, the number of COVID-19 cases doubled every three days before social distancing practices began. But when people started staying at home and staying at least six feet apart when out in public, the rate slowed down dramatically, doubling every 100 days.
However, the doubling rate stopped improving at that point, hitting a plateau.
Worse yet, the numbers never started going down — every infected person would still infect one person at a rate of transmission, or “Rt,” of 1. In other words, the virus continues spreading as the number of people getting sick is equal to the number of people recovering.
“You’d hope that number would go down,” Wagner said. “But that’s not what we found.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in Syracuse two weeks ago that regions couldn’t start reopening unless it had a transmission rate below 1.1. He said this week that at least three regions can begin phase one of the state’s “restart” plan, after slowing the rate of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
Elaine Hill at the University of Rochester told WHAM that the slow, regional re-openings may help “refine” their research to see which social distancing policies are more effective and which may be unnecessary. For example, their initial findings did not account for newer safety measures like wearing masks in public and increased testing.
“These are blunt tools that we have,” she said. “We may be able to do better.”
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