Effectiveness of physical distancing interventions on COVID 19 incidence

Objectives: In response to the global pandemic of COVID-19, many countries implemented physical distancing measures to limit the spread of the virus. We evaluate the impact of these interventions, namely school closures, workplace closures, public event cancellation, public transport closure, and ‘lockdown’measures on the trajectory of the epidemic.Design: Natural experiment and meta-analysis.Setting: 119 countries/regions.Participants: Individual countries/regions that implemented one of the five physical distancing interventions between January 01 and April 16, 2020.Main outcome measure: Incidence rate ratios (IRR) of COVID-19 comparing pre-and postintervention trend estimated using interrupted time series analysis. IRRs were synthesised across countries using random-effects meta-analysis.Results: Overall COVID-19 incidence was reduced by 13%(95% CI: 9-15%; N= 119) after the implementation of …