Buying Time for an Effective Epidemic Response: The Impact of a Public Holiday for Outbreak Control on COVID-19 Epidemic Spread.

ABSTRACT: Rapid responses in the early stage of a new epidemic are crucial in outbreak control. Public holidays for outbreak control could provide a critical time window for a rapid rollout of social distancing and other control measures at a large population scale. The objective of our study was to explore the impact of the timing and duration of outbreak-control holidays on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic spread during the early stage in China. We developed a compartment model to simulate the dynamic transmission of COVID-19 in China starting from January 2020. We projected and compared epidemic trajectories with and without an outbreak-control holiday that started during the Chinese Lunar New Year. We considered multiple scenarios of the outbreak-control holiday with different du

SUBMITTER: Chen S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7502241 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature