• Dario Gregori, Danila Azzolina, Corrado Lanera, Ilaria Prosepe, Nicolas Destro, Giulia Lorenzoni, and Paola Berchialla.
• Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences, and Public Health, University of Padova, Padova, Italy dario.gregori@unipd.it.
• J Epidemiol Community Health. 2020 Oct 1; 74 (10): 858-860.

BackgroundVeneto is one of the first Italian regions where the COVID-19 outbreak started spreading. Containment measures were approved soon thereafter. The present study aims at providing a first look at the impact of the containment measures on the outbreak progression in the Veneto region, Italy.MethodsA Bayesian changepoint analysis was used to identify the changing speed of the epidemic curve. Then, a piecewise polynomial model was considered to fit the data in the first period before the detected changepoint. In this time interval, that is, the weeks from 27 February to 12 March, a quadratic growth was identified by a generalised additive model (GAM). Finally, the model was used to generate the projection of the expected number of hospitalisations at 2 weeks based on the epidemic speed before the changepoint. Such estimates were then compared with the actual outbreak behaviour.ResultsThe comparison between the observed and predicted hospitalisation curves highlights a slowdown on the total COVID-19 hospitalisations after the onset of containment measures. The estimated daily slowdown effect of the epidemic growth is estimated as 78 hospitalisations per day as of 27 March (95% CI 75 to 81).ConclusionsThe containment strategies seem to have positively impacted the progression of the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak in Veneto.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

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