In early 2020, to halt the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the state government of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil established a public health assessment and response framework known as a "controlled distancing model." Using this framework, the government divided the state into 21 regions and evaluated them against a composite index of disease transmission and health service capacity. Regions were assessed using a color-coded scale of flags that was updated on a weekly basis and used to guide the adoption of nonpharmaceutical interventions. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the extent to which the controlled distancing model accurately assessed transmission and the effectiveness of its responses throughout 2020. We estimated the weekly effective reproduction number (