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. 2022 Jul 12:10:927553.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.927553. eCollection 2022.

Which Matters More in Fighting COVID-19-Government Policy or Community Participation?

Ying Qian  1 , Jiaoling Huang  2 , Laijun Zhao  1 , Io Hong Cheong  2 , Siqi Cao  1 , Li Xiong  3 , Qin Zhu  4
Affiliations

Which Matters More in Fighting COVID-19-Government Policy or Community Participation?

Ying Qian et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Objective: As a heavily populated megacity, Shanghai faces major epidemic risks. However, Shanghai's control of COVID-19 has been successful owing to both the strict government policy and wide community participation. Here, we investigated the impact of these stakeholders and examined who played a major role across different epidemic stages.

Design: We extended the classic susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model considering the heterogeneous contact structure in four social sceneries, i.e., school, workplace, public entertainment venues, and neighborhood community, which could reflect the impact of lockdown policy and wide participation of residents happened at the community level.

Result: The simulation results showed that without lockdown policy and only with community participation, the daily new confirmed cases would gradually increase to more than 7,000 [292/1,000,000] at the end of Sep. However, without community participation and only with a lockdown policy, the daily new confirmed cases sharply decreased to 30 [1.2/1,000,000] at the end of the 1st month and remained low for several months. However, when a lockdown policy was gradually lifted, the new confirmed cases increased exponentially, eventually reaching more than 17,000 [708/1,000,000]. Therefore, a government lockdown policy was necessary for the rapid control of COVID-19 during the outbreak stage while community participation is more important in keeping the number of new confirmed cases low during the reopening stage.

Conclusion: Government lockdown policy and community participation play different roles in the control of COVID-19 at different stages of the epidemic: although the government played a leading role in setting up policies, the broader participation of community fever clinics (CFCs) and the general public were especially crucial in winning the battle against COVID-19 in the long run.

Keywords: COVID-19; SEIR model; community participation; lockdown; system dynamics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Lockdown and reopening timeline.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The extended susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Simulation results and historical data.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Simulation results for different lockdown policies.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Simulation results for various effectiveness of community fever clinics (CFCs).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Simulation setting for contact rate at neighborhood community.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Simulation results with and without residents' cooperation in terms of behavior change.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Simulation results comparing the effects of lockdown policy and community participation: part (A) compares the only lockdown scenario with only community participation scenario; part (B) represents the lockdown scenario only; and part (C) represents the community participation scenario only.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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