Estimating Effect-sizes to Infer if COVID-19 transmission rates were low because of Masks, Heat or High because of Air-conditioners, Tests

How does one interpret the observed increase or decrease in COVID-19 case rates? Did the compliance to the non-pharmaceutical interventions, seasonal changes in the temperature influence the transmission rates or are they purely an artefact of the number of tests? To answer these questions, we estimate the effect-sizes from these different factors on the reproduction ratios (R _t ) from the different states of the USA during March 9 to August 9. Ideally R _t should be less than 1 to keep the pandemic under control and our model predicts many of these factors contributed significantly to the R _t ’s: Post-lockdown opening of the restaurants and nightclubs contributed 0.04 (CI 0.04-0.04) and 0.11 (CI. 0.11-0.11) to R _t . The mask mandates helped reduce R _t by 0.28 (CI 0.28-0.29)), whereas the testing rates which may have influenced the number of infections observed, did not influence R _t beyond 10,000 daily tests 0.07 (CI -0.57-0.42). In our attempt to understand the role of temperature, the contribution to the R _t was found to increase on both sides of 55 F, which we infer as a reflection of the climatization needs. A further analysis using the cooling and heating needs showed contributions of 0.24 (CI 0.18-0.31) and 0.31 (CI 0.28-0.33) respectively. The work thus illustrates a data-driven approach for estimating the effect-sizes on the graded policies, and the possibility of prioritizing the interventions, if necessary by weighing the economic costs and ease of acceptance with them.