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   Home ■ People ■ Society ■ Assessing the impact of physical distancing
   13 August 2020 /

   Nick Carne

Assessing the impact of physical distancing

   Two different approaches suggest that it works.
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   Credit: krblokhin/Getty Images

   Physical distancing and related safety precautions around COVID-19 make
   both health and business sense, according to two new – and very
   different – studies.

   In the first, medical researchers suggest that physical distancing
   orders issued by all 50 US states and the District of Columbia during
   March significantly slowed the epidemic, leading to a reduction of more
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   Clinicians analysed data from the first five months of the epidemic,
   comparing changes in COVID-19 cases and attributed deaths before and
   after implementation of statewide government-ordered physical
   distancing measures.

   They found, they say, that the average daily case growth rate began
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   The researchers do flag limitations to the analysis, however, notably
   that implementation was not a controlled experiment. If state
   governments intensified physical distancing measures in response to
   worsening local epidemics, they say, the analysis would likely have
   shown the policies to be less effective.
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   Science Centre argue that mathematically, under a wide range of
   parameters, reopening a business is only feasible if at least six
   safety measures are adopted: social distancing; wearing goggles, gloves
   and masks when with others; frequent hand washing; routine floor
   cleaning; monitoring body temperature; and quarantine of exposed and
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   productivity of US workers, the cost of PPE and other safety measures,
   and the reduction in productivity expected from a limit on working
   hours and the need for distancing. They estimated values for key
   parameters, such as the effectiveness of PPE in preventing
   transmission, the expected cost of these measures, and the dynamics of