Estimating COVID-19 cases and deaths prevented by non-pharmaceutical interventions, and the impact of individual actions: A retrospective model-based analysis

Simulation models from the early COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgency of applying non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), but had limited empirical data. Here we use data from 2020–2021 to retrospectively model the impact of NPIs in Ontario, Canada. Our model represents age groups and census divisions in Ontario, and is parameterized with epidemiological, testing, demographic, travel, and mobility data. The model captures how individuals adopt NPIs in response to reported cases. We compare a scenario representing NPIs introduced within Ontario (closures of workplaces/schools, reopening of schools/workplaces with NPIs in place, individual-level NPI adherence) to counterfactual scenarios wherein alternative strategies (e.g. no closures, reliance on individual NPI adherence) are adopted to ascertain the extent to which NPIs reduced cases and deaths. Combined school/workplace closure and individual NPI adoption reduced the number of deaths in the best-case scenario for the case fatality rate (CFR) from 178548 [CI: 171845, 185298] to 3190 [CI: 3095, 3290] in the Spring 2020 wave. In the Fall 2020/Winter 2021 wave, the introduction of NPIs in workplaces/schools reduced the number of deaths from 20183 [CI: 19296, 21057] to 4102 [CI: 4075, 4131]. Deaths were several times higher in the worst-case CFR scenario. Each additional 9−16 (resp. 285−578) individuals who adopted NPIs in the first wave prevented one additional infection (resp., death). Our results show that the adoption of NPIs prevented a public health catastrophe. A less comprehensive approach, employing only closures or individual-level NPI adherence, would have resulted in a large number of cases and deaths.