COVID-19 and social distancing: do non-pharmaceutical-interventions work (at least) in the short run?

David Bardey, Manuel Fernández and Alexis Gravel

Chapter Chapter 3 in Handbook on Inequality and COVID-19, 2025, pp 35-51 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Using detailed daily information covering 100 countries and an event study approach, we estimate the short-run effects of implementing non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on the spread of the COVID-19 virus at the early stages of the pandemic. We study the impact of two NPIs - stay-at-home requirements and workplace closures - on three outcomes: daily residential and workplace mobility; the daily growth rate of cases; and the daily growth rate of fatalities. Acknowledging that we observed a mobility reduction in countries before implementing NPIs, we find that immediately after NPIs were implemented, mobility declined by 0.2 standard deviations. Two weeks afterwards, it was down by 0.7. Twenty-five days after the NPIs were implemented, the daily growth rate of cases and deaths was lower by 10 and 8.4 per cent, respectively. Our results reveal that between 53 and 72 per cent of the reduction of the daily growth rate of cases and deaths associated with a reduction of mobility is caused by NPIs. Our results reveal that, in the short run, these NPIs effectively slow down the spread of the virus and its sanitary consequences.

Keywords: COVID-19; Non-pharmaceutical interventions; Pandemic; Social distancing; Mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035302758
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