What is the dominant route for the spread of Covid-19?
Zhang and others published a research article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PNAS.
They analysed the trend and mitigation measures in three epicentres – Wuhan, Italy and New York city – and elucidated the transmission pathways for COVID-19.
Their results showed that the airborne transmission route is highly virulent and dominant for the spread of COVID-19.
They also showed there was a difference with or without face masks and they significantly reduced the number of infections.
They also found that protective measures such as social distancing were insufficient in protecting the population.
So what is the effect of these quarantine, lockdown and isolation policies on the COVID-19 pandemic?
Solomon Hsiang and others published an article in Nature and they estimated that the early infections of COVID-19 exhibited exponential growth rates of roughly 38% per day without any interventions. They concluded that the social measures deployed achieved large, beneficial and measurable health outcomes.
They estimated that across China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States that this intervention had prevented or delayed 530 million total infections where there was the order of 62 million confirmed cases.
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