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

School closures restrict access to education with unwanted implications for members of society who are already underprivileged. As determined by our model, the mean effect size for school closures is among the lowest across the policy measures considered in this study. This finding is in line with prior literature in which the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 among children is regarded as comparatively small 16, 26 . The preceding argument also provides a possible explanation for why our model attributes only a small reduction of cases to this NPI. In contrast, the relative effect of closing venues is ranked among the top. This is an interesting addition to prior literature, in which this NPI has received rather little attention and thus deserves further investigation. Work bans are among the strictest measures and are attributed the second highest effect estimate. In contrast, our model suggests that lockdowns have only a small added value; however, lockdowns also entail a ban on public events and gatherings. When computing the combined effect of a lockdown with the latter two policy measures, the overall estimate is substantially larger.