We were expecting a peak, but we reached a plateau.

A statistical analysis of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., found that social distancing measures effectively slowed the spread of coronavirus on the whole, but did not reduce the number of new infections per day.

“All the social distancing was clearly helping, but it merely stabilized the process,” said Aaron Wagner, professor of electrical and computer engineering and first author of “Social Distancing Has Merely Stabilized COVID-19 in the U.S.,” which posted April 30 on the preprint server medRxiv.