Quantifying the impact of physical distance measures on the transmission of COVID-19 in the UK

Background To mitigate and slow the spread of COVID-19, many countries have adopted unprecedented physical distancing policies, including the UK. We evaluate whether these measures might be sufficient to control the epidemic by estimating their impact on the reproduction number ( R 0 , the average number of secondary cases generated per case). Methods We asked a representative sample of UK adults about their contact patterns on the previous day....