The Effect of Large-Scale Anti-Contagion Policies on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

Solomon Hsiang; Daniel Allen; Sebastien Annan-Phan; Kendon Bell; Ian Bolliger; Trinetta Chong; Hannah Druckenmiller; Andrew Hultgren; Luna Yue Huang; Emma Krasovich; Peiley Lau; Jaecheol Lee; Esther Rolf; Jeanette Tseng; Tiffany Wu

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint infections based on the observed timing of all policy deployments within each country (blue) and in a scenario where no policies were deployed (red). The difference between these two predictions is our estimated effect of actual anti-contagion policies on the growth rate of infections. Small markers are daily estimates for sub-national administrative units (vertical lines are 95% CI). Large markers are national average values for all sub-national units in our sample on that day. Black circles are observed changes in log(inf ections), averaged across the same administrative units. Predictions are only for observations in our sample, and we omit observations before sub-national units report ten cumulative cases. To focus our analysis on the impact of new policies, we omit data from China after March 5, 2020 because policies began to be rolled back during this period.