COVID-19 Deaths and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions in Minnesota, 2020
COVID-19 has had a devastating effect on nations around the world. It is of utmost interest to determine the best way to slow the spread of a disease in its early stages. Before pharmaceutical preventions and cures can be found, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are put in place to save lives. The goal of this study is to examine global, federal, and state governmental policies and to determine what effect they had on the mortality rate on Minnesota decedents for 2020. Data was provided by the Minnesota Department of Health and compared with a CDC timeline of NPI implementations, as well as state data on demographics. A timeline of NPIs was gathered from the CDC and government websites. R was used to compare and analyze the death and NPI data. The number of NPIs in a given week was compared to the number of COVID-19 deaths that occurred 2 weeks later. Our research found that demographic variables seemed to correspond with differences in efficacy ratings. The more densely populated an area, the higher its efficacy rating; this could be due to the fact that many NPIs sought to reduce face-to-face spread, which would be more noticeable in areas with large populations. Additionally, the larger the ratio of Republicans to Democrats, the lower the efficacy rating. The two highest poverty quantiles had lower efficacy as compared to the two lowest, and the two quantiles with the highest proportion of people over 65 had higher efficacy compared to younger populations.