Abstract
This study models local and cross-city transmissions of the novel coronavirus in China between January 19 and February 29, 2020. We examine the role of various socioeconomic mediating factors, including public health measures that encourage social distancing in local communities. Weather characteristics 2 weeks prior are used as instrumental variables for causal inference. Stringent quarantines, city lockdowns, and local public health measures imposed in late January significantly decreased the virus transmission rate. The virus spread was contained by the middle of February. Population outflow from the outbreak source region posed a higher risk to the destination regions than other factors, including geographic proximity and similarity in economic conditions. We quantify the effects of different public health measures in reducing the number of infections through counterfactual analyses. Over 1.4 million infections and 56,000 deaths may have been avoided as a result of the national and provincial public health measures imposed in late January in China.
Highlights
The first pneumonia case of unknown cause was found close to a seafood market in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, China, on December 8, 2019
By comparing the estimates before and after February 2, we examine whether the comprehensive set of policies at the national scale delays the spread of COVID-19
We divide the whole sample into two sub-samples (January 19 to February 1, and February 2 to February 29) and estimate the model using the whole sample and two sub-samples, respectively
Summary
The first pneumonia case of unknown cause was found close to a seafood market in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, China, on December 8, 2019. We estimate the mediating effects of socioeconomic factors on the transmission of COVID-19 in China These factors include population flow out of Wuhan, the distance between cities, GDP per capita, the number of doctors, and contemporaneous weather conditions. Liu et al (2020) identify 12 studies that estimated the basic reproductive number in the wide range of 1.4 to 6.5 (with a mean of 3.28 and a median of 2.79) for Wuhan, Hubei, China, or overseas during January 1 through January 28, 2020.4 Our R0 estimate relies on spatially disaggregated data during an extended period (until February 29, 2020) to mitigate potential biases, and the instrumental variable approach we use isolates the causal effect of virus transmissions and imposes fewer restrictions on the relationship between the unobserved determinants of new cases and the number of cases in the past. The Appendix contains additional details on the instrumental variables, data quality, and the computation of counterfactuals
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