The Effects of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on COVID-19 Epidemic Growth Rate during Pre- and Post-Vaccination Period in Asian Countries.

Le Duc Huy,Chung-Chien Huang,Nhi Thi Hong Nguyen,Phan Thanh Phuc

doi:10.3390/ijerph19031139

Abstract

There is little knowledge about how the influence of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) reduces the COVID-19 infection rate during the period of vaccine rollout. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of NPIs on decreasing the epidemic growth of COVID-19 between before and after the vaccine rollout period among Asian countries. Our ecological study included observations from 30 Asian countries over the 20 weeks of the pre- and post-vaccination period. Data were extracted from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and other open databases. Longitudinal analysis was utilized to evaluate the impacts of public health responses and vaccines. The facial covering policy was the most effective intervention in the pre-vaccination period, followed by border control and testing policies. In the post-vaccination period, restrictions on gatherings and public transport closure both play a key role in reducing the epidemic growth rate. Vaccine coverage of 1–5%, 5–10%, 10–30%, and over 30% of the population was linked with an average reduction of 0.12%, 0.32%, 0.31%, and 0.59%, respectively. Our findings support the evidence that besides the vaccine increasingly contributing to pandemic control, the implementation of NPIs also plays a key role.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has been continuously raising the enormous burdens of morbidity and mortality, leading to numerous consequences for societies and economies on humans worldwide, with nearly 270 million cases recorded, and more than 5.3 million deaths as of 13 December 2021 [1]
The average daily growth rate q is computed by the formula: wADGRt = 7 NNt – 1 (Supplementary Materials), where Nt t−1 and Nt−1 denote the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases at the end of the given week t and week t − 1, respectively [15]
20 weeks studied for each Asian country and overall

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has been continuously raising the enormous burdens of morbidity and mortality, leading to numerous consequences for societies and economies on humans worldwide, with nearly 270 million cases recorded, and more than 5.3 million deaths as of 13 December 2021 [1]. In 2020, many Asian governments obtained achievements in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to introducing timely and robust non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) [2]. These common NPIs included containment and closure policies (e.g., restrictions on gathering, school closure, public transport closure), and health system policies (e.g., testing policy, contact tracing) [2,3,4]. The vaccination coverage in most Asian countries is low, and far from the target of community immunity [5,6] as a result of the lack of vaccine supply, and vaccine hesitancy [7,8].

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