Could COVID-19 Mask and Vaccine Mandates Have Made a Difference if They Were Rolled Out Earlier?

Stacey Smith (), Pei Yuan (), Jeta Molla, Aiyush Bansal and Zahra Khanzad
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Stacey Smith: The University of Ottawa, Department of Mathematics and Faculty of Medicine
Pei Yuan: Shenzhen University, School of Mathematical Sciences
Jeta Molla: York University, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Aiyush Bansal: Unity Health Toronto
Zahra Khanzad: York University, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

A chapter in Trends in Biomathematics: Modeling Health Across Ecology, Social Interactions, and Cells, 2025, pp 275-287 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Hospitalisations and deaths due to COVID-19 in Canada declined after the first wave, thanks to nonpharmaceutical interventions and the vaccination campaign starting in December 2020, despite the emergence of highly contagious variants. We used an age-structured extended susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered compartment model to mimic the transmission of COVID-19 in Ontario from March 1, 2020, to May 31, 2021. We examined several counterfactual scenarios: (1) no mask mandates, (2) no vaccination, (3) instigating the mask mandate a month earlier and (4) rolling out the vaccine a month earlier. A 1-month-earlier vaccination program could have significantly decreased the number of cases and hospitalisations, but 1-month-earlier mask mandates would not have. It follows that the mandates that were implemented in practice were not optimal, but mostly performed well. Our model demonstrates that mask mandates played a vital role in saving lives in the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak and that the vaccination programme was crucial to averting subsequent cases and hospitalisations after it was implemented.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-97461-8_15

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