April 8, 2020

expert reaction to Cochrane rapid review of effectiveness of quarantine, either alone or in combination with other public health measures, to control COVID-19

The Cochrane Library have published a rapid review of 29 studies on the effectiveness of quarantine, either alone or in combination with other public health measures, to control COVID-19.

Prof Keith Neal, Emeritus Professor of the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham, said:

“This review suggests that quarantine works.  It is largely based on modelling and as modelling includes social mixing as a key part and reduction in social mixing would lead to showing a reduction in infections.  It is impossible to do controlled trails on the effectiveness of quarantine.  There are some things in science when we need to apply thought experiments.  If we reduce the number of people an infectious person meets then there are less people that person can infect.  This is the type of parameter models include.”

Nussbaumer‐Streit  B, Mayr  V, Dobrescu  AI, Chapman  A, Persad  E, Klerings  I, Wagner  G, Siebert  U, Christof  C, Zachariah  C, Gartlehner  G. Quarantine alone or in combination with other public health measures to control COVID‐19: a rapid review. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2020, Issue 4. Art. No.: CD013574. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD013574.

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD013574/full

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.