U.S. could have saved 36,000 lives if social distancing started 1 week earlier: study

• By Bill Chappell

The U.S. could have prevented roughly 36,000 deaths from COVID-19 if broad social distancing measures had been put in place just one week earlier, according to an analysis from Columbia University.

Underlining the importance of aggressively responding to the coronavirus, the study found the U.S. could have avoided at least 700,000 fewer infections if it had taken the same actions on March 8 that it started taking on March 15.

The U.S. currently has more than 1.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, and more than 93,000 people have died from the disease, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

In the analysis, researchers applied transmission models to data drawn from the pandemic’s actual course county-by-county in the U.S. — the worst-hit country in the world.

If social restrictions had gone into effect in the U.S. two weeks earlier, they found, nearly 54,00 people would still be alive and nearly a million COVID-19 cases would have been avoided.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11 — an act that had been widely anticipated. Two days later, President Trump declared a national emergency in the U.S. But it took even longer for dozens of U.S. states to order social distancing and shut down business as usual.

If the U.S. had been able to follow social distancing restrictions to the same degree on March 8, the study says, it would have sharply cut the respiratory disease’s impact — and the early action would have made a big difference in densely populated areas such as New York City.

Noting the New York metropolitan area’s status as the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., the paper says if restrictions had taken effect on March 8, the area would have had at least 209,987 fewer cases and 17,514 fewer deaths.

The new analysis finds social distancing has been very effective in slowing the spread of the virus and it looks at what might happen if states or local governments lift those orders too soon – or wait too long to reimpose them.

Predict a worrying trend, the researchers say that once counties and states reopen their economies and lift restrictions, the number of daily confirmed cases will likely continue to decline for almost two weeks. That residual benefit from the shutdown, paired with the lag time between COVID-19 infection and diagnostic confirmation, will create “a false signal that the pandemic is well under control,” they write.

Citing the persistent vulnerability to the virus, the researchers say their models describe “a large resurgence of both cases and deaths … peaking in early- and mid-June,” even if restrictions are installed anew, just two or three weeks after being relaxed.

“We have to be so responsive and so attentive to what’s going on,” researcher Jeffrey Shaman tells NPR, “and able to quickly identify when there’s a resurgence of the infection in the community and to respond to it quickly and to have the will to do so and not repeat our mistakes.”

As of Wednesday, all 50 states have at least partially eased restrictions on businesses, with a mix of policies letting restaurants or stores welcome customers. Many states still have stay-at-home orders or other social distancing policies in effect, and some cities and counties are maintaining shutdown orders.