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. 2023 Apr 6;13(1):5629.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-31709-2.

A global analysis of the effectiveness of policy responses to COVID-19

Kwadwo Agyapon-Ntra  1 , Patrick E McSharry  2   3   4
Affiliations

A global analysis of the effectiveness of policy responses to COVID-19

Kwadwo Agyapon-Ntra et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Governments implemented many non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to suppress the spread of COVID-19 with varying results. In this paper, country-level daily time series from Our World in Data facilitates a global analysis of the propagation of the virus, policy responses and human mobility patterns. High death counts and mortality ratios influence policy compliance levels. Evidence of long-term fatigue was found with compliance dropping from over 85% in the first half of 2020 to less than 40% at the start of 2021, driven by factors such as economic necessity and optimism coinciding with vaccine effectiveness. NPIs ranged from facial coverings to restrictions on mobility, and these are compared using an empirical assessment of their impact on the growth rate of case numbers. Masks are the most cost-effective NPI currently available, delivering four times more impact than school closures, and approximately double that of other mobility restrictions. Gathering restrictions were the second most effective. International travel controls and public information campaigns had negligible effects. Literacy rates and income support played key roles in maintaining compliance. A 10% increase in literacy rate was associated with a 3.2% increase in compliance, while income support of greater than half of previous earnings increased compliance by 4.8%.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Global evolution of COVID-19 showing the temporal variation in new cases, mortality ratio, mean stringency ratio, mean residential mobility index and vaccination administration.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Average compliance levels for the globe using rolling windows of three months from April 2020 to December 2020 (the pre-vaccination period) superimposed on the weekly percentage change in deaths smoothed per million and the weekly percentage change in case counts smoothed per million.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Average compliance levels for the globe and each continent using correlations estimated using rolling windows of three months between April 2020 and April 2022.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Scatter plot of GDP per capita against compliance for each country in the pre-vaccination period (1st April 2020 through 31st December 2020).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Global temporal variation in mean stringency sub-index, including facial covering index (right), and number of new cases smoothed per million (left).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Policy impact quantified using the correlation between government policies and relative changes in normalised case counts for various horizons.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Feature importance of demographic and socioeconomic factors based on the square of correlation coefficients (R-squared) against compliance.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Linear regression model using the literacy rate as the selected independent variable and compliance as the dependent variable.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Linear regression model using income support as the selected independent variable and compliance as the dependent variable.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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