Reports find social distancing measures are working but more progress still needed

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Social distancing measures appear to be making a difference in slowing the spread of the coronavirus in King County, according to two new reports by the Bellevue-based Institute for Disease Modeling.

To get their findings, IDM worked with Public Health – Seattle & King County and used data from the Washington State Department of Health and Facebook to look at changes in population mobility.

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The researchers defined population mobility as people going to school, work, etc.

Researchers said results showed reductions in mobility beginning in early March as increasing levels of social distancing measures in King County and across the state went into effect. Click here to see the full report.

IDM then looked to see if the reductions in mobility could be related to reductions in COVID-19 transmission.

To do that, researchers said they used a simulation of COVID-19 testing, diagnosis and health data for King County.

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“They found that a measure of transmission, called the effective reproductive number dropped by about half from about 2.7 in late February to about 1.4 on March 18. This number represents the number of new transmissions stemming from each infection,” James Apa, of Public Health – Seattle King County, wrote in a news release.

Officials said each infected person, on average, must infect fewer than one person in order to see a drop in new cases. Click here to see the full report.

“We are seeing a positive effect from the social distancing and other measures we’ve put in place, although significant numbers of cases and deaths continue to occur,” said Dr. Jeff Duchin, Health Officer for Public Health – Seattle & King County.

There are at least 195 coronavirus related deaths in Washington from 4,896 cases, according to the most recent State Department of Health numbers released Sunday. 144 deaths and 2,161 cases have come in King County.

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Duchin went on the explain that the findings are based on a small number of cases and people tested and “therefore come with a great deal of uncertainty.” Duchin said they will need to continue to monitor the measures in place to get more reliable data.

Duchin said the findings should not be taken as reason to relax the social distancing measures because the threat of a rebound could overwhelm the health care system.

“Our model looks at the data to determine if social distancing measures are slowing the spread of COVID-19," said Dr. Daniel Klein, computational research team lead at IDM. “While the results indicate an improvement, the epidemic was still growing in King County as of March 18th. The main takeaway here is though we’ve made some great headway, our progress is precarious and insufficient.”

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