Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions
Top Cited Papers
- 16 November 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Human Behaviour
- Vol. 4 (12), 1303-1312
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01009-0
Abstract
Assessing the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is critical to inform future preparedness response plans. Here we quantify the impact of 6,068 hierarchically coded NPIs implemented in 79 territories on the effective reproduction number, Rt, of COVID-19. We propose a modelling approach that combines four computational techniques merging statistical, inference and artificial intelligence tools. We validate our findings with two external datasets recording 42,151 additional NPIs from 226 countries. Our results indicate that a suitable combination of NPIs is necessary to curb the spread of the virus. Less disruptive and costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic, ones (for example, a national lockdown). Using country-specific ‘what-if’ scenarios, we assess how the effectiveness of NPIs depends on the local context such as timing of their adoption, opening the way for forecasting the effectiveness of future interventions.Keywords
Funding Information
- Vienna Science and Technology Fund (MA16-045, MA16-045, 20-001, COV 20-017, MA16-045)
- Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft (857136)
This publication has 43 references indexed in Scilit:
- The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in ChinaScience, 2020
- The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreakScience, 2020
- The Late Arrival of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Africa: Mitigating Pan-continental SpreadClinical Infectious Diseases, 2020
- When is the COVID-19 Pandemic Over? Evidence from the Stay-at-home Policy Execution in 106 Chinese CitiesSSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
- The effect of control strategies to reduce social mixing on outcomes of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China: a modelling studyThe Lancet Public Health, 2020
- COVID-19 control in China during mass population movements at New YearThe Lancet, 2020
- Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza — United States, 2017MMWR. Recommendations and Reports, 2017
- The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-Driven Contagion PhenomenaScience, 2013
- A New Framework and Software to Estimate Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers During EpidemicsAmerican Journal of Epidemiology, 2013
- How generation intervals shape the relationship between growth rates and reproductive numbersProceedings. Biological sciences, 2006