Report 11 - Evidence of initial success for China exiting COVID-19 social distancing policy after achieving containment

The COVID-19 epidemic was declared a Global Pandemic by WHO on 11 March 2020. The outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. For the first time since the outbreak began, there have been no new confirmed cases caused by local transmission in China reported for five consecutive days up to 23 March 2020. This is an indication that the social distancing measures enacted in China have led to control of COVID-19 in China.

These results do not preclude future epidemics in China, nor do they allow the authors to estimate the maximum proportion of previous within-city activity that will be recovered in the medium term. However, they do suggest that after very intense social distancing which resulted in containment, China has successfully exited its stringent social distancing policy to some degree. Policies implemented to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in China and the exiting strategies that followed can inform decision making processes for countries once containment is achieved.