Estimating the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on documented infections with COVID-19: A cross-country analysis

Nicolas Banholzer; Eva van Weenen; Bernhard Kratzwald; Arne Seeliger; Daniel Tschernutter; Pierluigi Bottrighi; Alberto Cenedese; Joan Puig Salles; Stefan Feuerriegel; Werner Vach

Our analysis is designed so as to be of direct relevance for health-policy. To this end, a focus is placed on documented COVID-19 cases. Documented case figures are readily available and serve as the basis for decision-making in health-policy, specifically in order to control the epidemic so that the surge capacity in critical care is not exceeded. Thereby, we ensure that our estimates are directly transferable to health-policy design and evaluation. By providing empirical evidence regarding how new cases are influenced by different NPIs, our findings can serve as a blueprint for designing policies that are cost-effective. Other metrics (e.g., the effective reproduction rate or the serial interval) serve a different purpose, as they are primarily used to study epidemiological characteristics of how infectious diseases spread. Nevertheless, NPIs aim at reducing the infection rates and, hence, corresponding models can be an 13 All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.