Identify successful restrictions in suppressing the early outbreak of COVID-19 in Arizona, United States: Interrupted time series analysis

Abstract

COVID-19 was responsible for many deaths and economic losses around the globe since its first case report. Governments implemented a variety of policies to combat the pandemic in order to protect their citizens and save lives. Early in 2020, the first cases were reported in Arizona State and continued to rise until the discovery of the vaccine in 2021. A variety of strategies and interventions to stop or decelerate the spread of the pandemic has been considered. It is recommended to define which strategy was successful for disease propagation prevention and could be used in further similar situations. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of people’s contact interventions strategies which were implemented in Arizona State and their effect on reducing the daily new COVID-19 cases and deaths. Their effect on daily COVID-19 cases and deaths were evaluated using an interrupted time series analysis during the pandemic’s first peaks to better understand the onward situation. Canceling the order of staying at home (95% CI, 1718.52 to 6218.79; p<0.001) and expiring large gatherings (95% CI, 1984.99 to 7060.26; p<0.001) on June 30 and August 17, 2020, respectively, had a significant effect on the pandemic, leading to the daily cases to grow rapidly. Moreover, canceling the stay at home orders led to an increase in the number of COVID-19 daily deaths by 67.68 cases (95% CI, 27.96 to 107.40; p<0.001) after about 21 days while prohibiting large gatherings significantly decreased 66.76 (95% CI: 20.56 to 112.96; p = 0.004) the number of daily deaths with about 21 days’ lag. The results showed that strategies aimed at reducing people’s contact with one another could successfully help fight the pandemic. Findings from this study provide important evidence to support state-level policies that require observance of social distancing by the general public for future pandemics.