Abstract
Social distancing policies have been regarded as effective in containing the rapid spread of COVID-19. However, there is a limited understanding of policy effectiveness from a spatiotemporal perspective. This study integrates geographical, demographical, and other key factors into a regression-based event study framework, to assess the effectiveness of seven major policies on human mobility and COVID-19 case growth rates, with a spatiotemporal emphasis. Our results demonstrate that stay-at-home orders, workplace closures, and public information campaigns were effective in decreasing the confirmed case growth rate. For stay-at-home orders and workplace closures, these changes were associated with significant decreases (p < 0.05) in mobility. Public information campaigns did not see these same mobility trends, but the growth rate still decreased significantly in all analysis periods (p < 0.01). Stay-at-home orders and international/national travel controls had limited mitigation effects on the death case growth rate (p < 0.1). The relationships between policies, mobility, and epidemiological metrics allowed us to evaluate the effectiveness of each policy and gave us insight into the spatiotemporal patterns and mechanisms by which these measures work. Our analysis will provide policymakers with better knowledge regarding the effectiveness of measures in space–time disaggregation.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilCOVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), known as the novel coronavirus, is known to cause severe respiratory damage and other possibly fatal symptoms
The impacts of this policy on mobility were insignificant by the fourth week, the impacts of stay-at-home orders on the confirmed case growth rate were significant over four months
Our analysis showed that public information campaigns generally had little to no effect on the mobility subgroups; these measures can effectively reduce the COVID-19 confirmed case growth rate (e.g., 10.331 percentage points in one week, 18.792 in two weeks, 19.538 in three weeks, 18.569 in four weeks, 19.917 in one to two months, and 22.534 in more than two months)
Summary
COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), known as the novel coronavirus, is known to cause severe respiratory damage and other possibly fatal symptoms. COVID-19 is more fatal than the flu but has a death rate lower than other notable epidemics such as Ebola [1]. Because coronavirus is highly contagious, it kills more people than these deadlier diseases [2]. The fact that COVID-19 is highly contagious, paired with extensive human mobility, both nationally and internationally, means that this virus has a high rate of transmission. Social distancing measures are important to implement in public areas. As the emergence and spread of this respiratory disease is aided by social contact and takes on different manifestations by region, it is important to analyze COVID-19 from a spatiotemporal perspective [3]
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