Communications of the ACM
Restrictions Are Slowing Coronavirus Infections, Data Suggest
Times Square stood nearly empty on March 22. Intriguing new data suggest that stay-at-home measures may be working.
Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Data from Internet-connected thermometer producer Kinsa Health suggests that mass business closures and social-distancing edicts imposed to fight the coronavirus pandemic are helping reduce the numbers of fevers recorded across the U.S. The company on March 22 created a national map of fever levels that could be used to see this decline, which later was bolstered by data from New York State and Washington State health departments.
Kinsa's thermometers upload a user's temperature readings to a centralized database, enabling the company to track fevers across the country. More than 1 million Kinsa thermometers are in circulation, and have been recording up to 162,000 daily temperature readings since COVID-19 began propagating in the U.S. New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that the restrictions “are burdensome. But they are effective, and they are necessary. The evidence suggests that they have slowed our hospitalizations, and that is everything.”
From The New York Times
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