An Assessment of the Smart COVID-19 Approach to Lockdown and its Empirical Evidence

Abdul Ghaffar, Mubasher Munir (), Osama Aziz (), Reda Alhajj and Asif Sanaullah
Additional contact information
Abdul Ghaffar: Research Data Center Pakistan
Mubasher Munir: Universiti Sultan Zainul Abideen Malaysia
Osama Aziz: Ryerson University Canada
Reda Alhajj: Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey
Asif Sanaullah: Universiti Sultan Zainul Abideen, Malaysia

Empirical Economic Review, 2020, vol. 3, issue 2, 31-61

Abstract: COVID-19 is a new and contagious disease that has changed human lifestyle and habits globally according to the directions provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Until some authentic remedy or vaccine becomes available, every country is providing instructions to its public to follow precautionary measures. These measures may include lockdown, social distancing, restricting movement, and educating public about COVID-19. Lockdown is the most applied and successful way to control the virus spread and it remains helpful in curtailing the spike. However, it adversely affects developing countries like Pakistan. All types of lockdown disrupt the life of the poor and the middle class. In this paper, an intelligent-smart approach is suggested for developing countries as against complete lockdown to handle the pandemic. This approach will show the long-term results needed for controlling COVID-19 without creating any major disturbance in the economy. In this paper, evidence based approaches were used to evaluate the short-term and long-term effects of the daily increasing number of cases of COVID-19 in Pakistan. The results showed that Sindh, which has the maximum number of COVID-19 cases, is better in implementing smart lockdown as compared to other administrative regions of Pakistan. As the risk of the second wave of COVID-19 is enhanced, it would be effective to continue the intelligent-smart approach with mild SOPs to avoid the disastrous effects of COVID-19 in the future.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Polynomial Curve; Social Distancing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ojs.umt.edu.pk/index.php/eer/article/view/405/184 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:empecr:0028

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economic Review is currently edited by Muhammad Shahid Hassan

More articles in Empirical Economic Review from Department of Economics and Statistics, Dr Hassan Murad School of Management, University of Management and Technology, Lahore CII Johar Town Lahore. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sidra Raza ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).