Abstract
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has elicited an abrupt pause in the United States in multiple sectors of commerce and social activity. As the US faces this health crisis, the magnitude and rigor of their initial public health response was unprecedented. As a response, the entire nation shutdown at the state-level for the duration of a ~1–3 months. These public health interventions, however, were not arbitrarily decided, but rather, implemented as a result of evidence-based practices. These practices were a result of lessons learned during the 1918 influenza pandemic and the city-level non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) taken across the US. During the 1918 pandemic, two model cities, St. Louis, MO, and Philadelphia, PA, carried out two different approaches to address the spreading disease, which resulted in two distinctly different outcomes. Our group has evaluated the state-level public health response adopted by states across the US, with a focus on New York, California, Florida, and Texas, and compared the effectiveness of reducing the spread of COVID-19. Our assessments show that while the states mentioned above benefited from the implementations of early preventative measures, they inadequately replicated the desired outcomes observed in St. Louis during the 1918 crisis. Our study indicates that there are other factors, including health disparities that may influence the effectiveness of public health interventions applied. Identifying more specific health determinants may help implement targeted interventions aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19 and improving health equity.
Highlights
As the first wave of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began to sweep through the United States (US) in March 2020, multiple public health measures were enforced across the nation in an unprecedented manner
To better understand the dynamics of COVID-19 spread in each of these states, we reviewed the number of cases and deaths in the six most populous counties in each of these states (Figure 2)
It is clear that New York experienced a robust first wave and a negligible second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic
Summary
As the first wave of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began to sweep through the United States (US) in March 2020, multiple public health measures were enforced across the nation in an unprecedented manner. We observed a similar pattern in the counties in Florida and Texas, except Miami-Dade County in Florida, which showed a peak case rate of about 15 cases per 10,000 people in early April (Figures 2C,E,G) Among these states, it is clear that New York experienced a robust first wave and a negligible second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This helped states “flatten the curve” to various degrees and control the initial spread of COVID-19 within their states These public health interventions seemed to have prolonged the transmission potential of the COVID-19 as states, including California, Florida, and Texas were experiencing new daily highs in confirmed cases by the end of June 2020 [1]. By the end of June 2020, many such states were reimplementing statewide partial shutdown measures to prevent a potential second wave of COVID-19
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