Abstract
Importance After abrupt closures of businesses and public gatherings in the US in late spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, by mid-May 2020, most states reopened their economies. Owing in part to a lack of earlier data, there was little evidence on whether state reopening policies influenced important pandemic outcomes—COVID-19–related hospitalizations and mortality—to guide future decision-making in the remainder of this and future pandemics.
Objective To investigate changes in COVID-19–related hospitalizations and mortality trends after reopening of US state economies.
Design, Setting, and Participants Using an interrupted time series approach, this cross-sectional study examined trends in per-capita COVID-19–related hospitalizations and deaths before and after state reopenings between April 16 and July 31, 2020. Daily state-level data from the University of Minnesota COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project on COVID-19–related hospitalizations and deaths across 47 states were used in the analysis.
Exposures Dates that states reopened their economies.
Main Outcomes and Measures State-day observations of COVID-19–related hospitalizations and COVID-19–related new deaths per 100 000 people.
Sumedha Gupta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, IU School of Liberal Arts at IU Indianapolis
