Abstract
Many scholars have considered the relationship between the government response to COVID-19, an important social intervention strategy, and the COVID-19 infection rate. However, few have examined the sustained impact of an early government response on the COVID-19 infection rate. The current paper fills this gap by investigating a national survey performed in February 2020 and infection data from Chinese cities surveyed 1.5 years after the outbreak of COVID-19. The results suggest that the Chinese government’s early response to COVID-19 significantly and sustainedly reduced China’s COVID-19 infection rate, and that this impact worked through risk perception, the adoption of protective action recommendations (PARs), and the chain-mediating effects of risk perception and the adoption of PARs, respectively. These findings have important practical value. In demonstrating how government response and infection rate at the macro level are connected to the behaviour of individuals at the micro level, they suggest feasible directions for curbing the spread of diseases such as COVID-19. When facing such public health emergencies, the focus should be on increasing the public’s risk perception and adoption of PARs.
Highlights
COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus even more infectious than the virus responsible for the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak
The results indicated that government response was significantly negatively associated with infection rate and significantly positively associated with risk perception and protective action recommendations (PARs) adoption
Based on data from a nationwide survey conducted by a research group in mainland China in February 2020 and data on infection cases in selected cities in the 1.5 years following the outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019, this study investigated the sustained effect of an early government response to the pandemic
Summary
COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus even more infectious than the virus responsible for the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. By August 5, 2021, 200 million confirmed cases and 4.26 million deaths had been reported worldwide. China had reported only 121,326 confirmed cases and 5651 deaths [2]. These figures are surprisingly low, given our limited understanding of the virus and the absence of effective drug treatments. A research team from the University of Oxford shed light on this question by reporting a link between government response and the spread of COVID-19, with strong early intervention by the Chinese government playing a crucial role in limiting the spread of the disease [3]. Did the government’s early intervention have a sustained impact on COVID-19 infection, limiting the later spread of the disease? We attempt to fill this research gap
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