December 7, 2021

Post written by Greg Richter

Closing indoor dining during the first two waves of the pandemic was associated with a 61% decline in new COVID-19 cases over a six-week span, preventing an estimated 142 daily cases per city, compared with cities that reopened indoor dining during that period, according to recently published data from experts at the Dornsife School of Public Health. The team looked at data from March to October 2020 in 11 U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, Atlanta and Dallas. The results were published last month in the journal Epidemiology.

“This clear association between indoor dining and COVID infections can help inform policies that limit indoor dining to slow the transmission of this disease,” said study lead author Alina S. Schnake-Mahl, ScD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative. “We must learn from what worked in the early months of the pandemic, especially with the Omicron variant now in the United States and Delta rapidly causing more COVID-19 cases in countries around the globe.”

To read the full article, please visit DrexelNOW.