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  • Trading Health for Wealth: The Effect of COVID-19 Response Stringency

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    Author(s)
    Cross, Megan
    Ng, Shu-Kay
    Scuffham, Paul
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Scuffham, Paul A.
    Ng, Shu Kay Angus
    Year published
    2020
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    Abstract
    International governments' COVID-19 responses must balance human and economic health. Beyond slowing viral transmission, strict lockdowns have severe economic consequences. This work investigated response stringency, quantified by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker's Stringency Index, and examined how restrictive interventions affected infection rates and gross domestic product (GDP) in China and OECD countries. Accounting for response timing, China imposed the most stringent restrictions, while Sweden and Japan were the least stringent. Expected GDP declines range from -8% (Japan) to -15.4% (UK). While greater ...
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    International governments' COVID-19 responses must balance human and economic health. Beyond slowing viral transmission, strict lockdowns have severe economic consequences. This work investigated response stringency, quantified by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker's Stringency Index, and examined how restrictive interventions affected infection rates and gross domestic product (GDP) in China and OECD countries. Accounting for response timing, China imposed the most stringent restrictions, while Sweden and Japan were the least stringent. Expected GDP declines range from -8% (Japan) to -15.4% (UK). While greater restrictions generally slowed viral transmission, they failed to reach statistical significance and reduced GDP (p = 0.006). Timing was fundamental: governments who responded to the pandemic faster saw greater reductions in viral transmission (p = 0.013), but worse decreases in GDP (p = 0.044). Thus, response stringency has a greater effect on GDP than infection rates, which are instead affected by the timing of COVID-19 interventions. Attempts to mitigate economic impacts by delaying restrictions or decreasing stringency may buoy GDP in the short term but increase infection rates, the longer-term economic consequences of which are not yet fully understood. As highly restrictive interventions were successful in some but not all countries, decision-makers must consider whether their strategies are appropriate for the country on health and economic grounds.
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    Journal Title
    International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
    Volume
    17
    Issue
    23
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17238725
    Copyright Statement
    © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
    Subject
    Health services and systems
    Public health
    Epidemiology not elsewhere classified
    Health economics
    COVID-19
    GDP
    infection rate
    stringency index
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/399967
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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