Non-pharmaceutical interventions reduced COVID-19 cases in China, experts say

Researchers have discovered that China's in-time non-pharmaceutical interventions dramatically played down the infections of novel coronavirus, saying "without NPIs, the COVID-19 cases would likely have shown a 67-fold increase by Feb 29."

Researchers from China, Britain and the US have worked out a modeling framework to quantify the effectiveness of NPIs. The paper of their findings has been accepted by the British scientific journal Nature and will be published soon. An accelerated article review is available online.

There are three major groups of NPIs in China, including the restriction of inter-city population movement, the identification and isolation of cases, and the reduction of inner-city travel and contact to increase social distance.

The modeling framework, based on epidemiological and human movement data, simulated outbreak and intervention scenarios across China. The combined NPIs achieved the strongest and most rapid effect.