COVID-19 Quarantine Ineffective for Numerous States

New York state has experienced the largest number of positive cases of COVID-19 and deaths from the disease, mainly located in the greater New York City area.

Those numbers have been in decline in the last two weeks following restrictions on movement.

But that decline is not consistent across other states. North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Delaware, and Minnesota have all seen a steady increase in positive tests since most quarantines went into effect around the third week of March according to numbers from the COVID Tracking Project. Illinois, New Jersey, Louisiana, and Missouri have seen a steady increase in deaths from the disease following the quarantine as well.

Those states haven’t had deaths on the same scale as New York (17,000+), but states like New Jersey (6,442) and Illinois (2,125) are in second and fifth place despite a stay-in-place orders were enacted over a month ago to prevent exponential growth of the disease.

Other, mainly rural states like Wyoming, Maine, South Dakota, and Hawaii have had increasing or consistent rates whether they have stay-in-place restrictions or not, but their overall totals remain low and the disease has had little real impact.

A forecasting model for deaths from the disease developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington indicates that the death rate per day for both New Jersey and Illinois should switch from increasing to dropping dramatically in the next day, with the death rate falling to zero by May 10. It recommends containment strategies could cease by May 20th.

Archives of the IHME site show that it has repeatedly predicted a topping off of death rates through most of April.