Containment Measures during the COVID Pandemic: The Role of Non-pharmaceutical Health Policies

Authors

Michael Funke
Tai-Kuang Ho
Andrew Tsang

Publication Date

1-1-2023

Journal

Journal of Policy Modeling

Abstract

Many countries have imposed a set of non-pharmaceutical health policy interventions in an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of the interventions, drawing on evidence from the OECD countries. A special feature here is the mechanism that underlies the impact of the containment policies. To this end, a causal mediation analysis decomposing the total effect into a direct and an indirect effect is conducted. The key finding is a dual cause-effect channel. On the one hand, there is a direct effect of the non-pharmaceutical interventions on the various health variables. Beyond this, a quantitatively dominant indirect impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions operating via voluntary changes in social distancing is shown.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions, mediation analysis, causal effects

Comments

PMID: 36532102