key: cord-0991201-6fqbaese authors: Maples, Laura S. title: A rapid review of quarantine and/or other public health measures to control COVID‐19 date: 2020-12-11 journal: Int J Nurs Pract DOI: 10.1111/ijn.12903 sha: 6b3beaec81a7c9949956b29a1fa2c69f066efb9d doc_id: 991201 cord_uid: 6fqbaese nan [WHO], 2020). SARS-CoV-2 is genetically similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also caused by coronaviruses. It is transmitted via infective droplets during close unprotected proximity to infected persons or their environment. It has higher transmissibility than both SARS and MERS with a basic reproduction rate (R 0 ) between 1.5 and 6.49 without quarantine and social distancing (Liu, 2020) . To compare, the R 0 for SARS is 3.0 (Bauch, Lloyd-Smith, Coffee, & Galvani, 2005) , MERS is 1.0 (Park et al., 2020) and the seasonal influenza is 1.8 (Biggerstaff, Cauchemez, Reed, Gambhir, & Finelli, 2014) . The pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 is lower than that of SARS and MERS with most COVID-19 patients developing mild cases of dry cough, fever and fatigue while only 5%-6% become critically ill. Fatality is estimated at 0.7%, and initial data indicate this increases with age. There are no known effective treatments or vaccines for COVID-19 (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020). Public health measures (PHM) such as quarantine, physical distancing and isolation remain the few interventions available to control it. The primary objective of this rapid review was to determine the effectiveness of quarantine on coronavirus outbreaks to support the WHO quarantine recommendation. Quarantine alone was compared to no intervention. Quarantine in combination with other PHM was compared to other PHM without quarantine to control COVID-19. The comparative effectiveness sought was decreased transmission, incidence, mortality and resource use. • Quarantine means separating healthy people from other healthy people in case they might have and could spread the virus. • Other PHM include isolation of those infected from those who are not, physical distancing, personal protective equipment (PPE), hand hygiene, school and workplace measures and/or closures and crowd avoidance. Non-randomized interventional studies are considered the best available empirical evidence since randomization of quarantine is unethical. The evidence found in this review consists of four observational studies and 28 modelling studies for COVID-19; 15 modelling and four observational studies for SARS and MERS. The authors rated the evidence certainty as low to very low using the GRADE approach. However, these studies consistently found that quarantine was important in reducing incidence and fatality, averting 44%-96% of cases and 31%-76% of deaths in modelling study simulations. With very low certainty, earlier quarantine measures resulted in greater cost savings. When quarantine was combined with other PHM, models suggest a larger effect on the reduction of new cases and fatality. Email: laura.s.maples@kp.org Dynamically modeling SARS and other newly emerging respiratory illnesses: Past, present, and future Estimates of the reproduction number for seasonal, pandemic, and zoonotic influenza: A systematic review of the literature The reproductive number of COVID-19 is higher compared to SARS coronavirus Quarantine alone or in combination with other public health measures to control COVID-19: a rapid review Effect of isolation practice on the transmission of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus among hemodialysis patients: A 2-year prospective cohort study Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)