Social distancing effects

Each of three social distancing measures enacted in Germany led to a decline in COVID-19 cases that became detectable 2 weeks after its implementation, according to a short-term modeling study in Science. Of the three measures — in sequence: canceling large events, school closures, and, lastly, contact banning and closure of nonessential stores — only the third stopped exponential growth of the epidemic. The authors write, “Lifting restrictions too much will quickly lead to renewed exponential growth and … we would be effectively blind to this worsened situation for nearly two weeks in which … transmission will be uninhibited.”

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/14/science.abb9789