School Notes: School of Public Health
July/August 2020

Risk of resurgence in epidemic if state reopens too quickly

As Connecticut tentatively reopens after a lengthy shutdown, a new report by the Yale School of Public Health warns that if people resume normal activities and contacts too quickly there will be a “sharp resurgence” in hospitalizations and deaths in the coming months. 

Associate Professor Forrest Crawford and postdocs Olga Morozova ’18PhD and Zehang (Richard) Li created a mathematical model to predict COVID-19 transmission, hospitalization, and deaths in the state under “slow” and “fast” reopening scenarios. If the state reopens too quickly, a second wave may be unleashed, which could result in an estimated total of over 8,100 deaths by September 1 in Connecticut. More than 3,500 state residents have already died from coronavirus. 

Bullying is common factor in LGBTQ youth suicides

YSPH researchers have found that death records of LGBTQ youth who died by suicide were substantially more likely to mention bullying as a factor than those of their non-LGBTQ peers. The researchers reviewed nearly 10,000 death records of youth ages 10 to 19 who died by suicide in the United States from 2003 to 2017. The findings were published in JAMA Pediatrics. 

While LGBTQ youth are more likely to be bullied and to report suicidal thoughts and behaviors than non-LGBTQ youth, this is believed to be the first study showing that bullying is a more common precursor to suicide among LGBTQ youth than among 
their peers. 

Strong public health response in China slowed coronavirus transmission

Swift isolation and quarantine policies as well as city lockdowns imposed by the Chinese government in late January 2020 significantly decreased the transmission rate of COVID-19, according to a study published in the Journal of Population Economics.

Before these public-health measures were implemented, it was estimated that one infected person on average could transmit the virus to 2.99 other people within a two-week span. This transmission number, known as the virus’s R naught or basic reproduction number, is a measure of how contagious it is. By February 2020, the transmission rate fell substantially to one person on average infecting 1.24 people in the epicenter of Hubei province, and to 0.61 people outside Hubei.