Related papers: Did lockdowns serve their purpose?
We assess the impact of COVID-19 response measures implemented in Germany and Switzerland on cumulative COVID-19-related hospitalization and death rates. Our analysis exploits the fact that the epidemic was more advanced in some regions…
I critique a recent analysis (Miles, Stedman & Heald, 2020) of COVID-19 lockdown costs and benefits, focussing on the United Kingdom (UK). Miles et al. (2020) argue that the March-June UK lockdown was more costly than the benefit of lives…
The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019-2020 (COVID-19) is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This pathogenic virus is able to spread asymptotically during its incubation stage through a…
The synthetic control method is an empirical methodology forcausal inference using observational data. By observing thespread of COVID-19 throughout the world, we analyze the dataon the number of deaths and cases in different regions…
This paper discusses some statistical aspects of the U.K. Covid-19 pandemic response, focussing particularly on cases where we believe that a statistically questionable approach or presentation has had a substantial impact on public…
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus had a significant effect on social, economic, and health systems globally. The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, and spread worldwide resulting in severe disease, death, and social interference.…
In this paper, we study the trending behaviour of COVID-19 data at country level, and draw attention to some existing econometric tools which are potentially helpful to understand the trend better in future studies. In our empirical study,…
The difference in COVID 19 death rates across political regimes has caught a lot of attention. The "efficient autocracy" view suggests that autocracies may be more efficient at putting in place policies that contain COVID 19 spread. On the…
While many efforts are currently devoted to vaccines development and administration, social distancing measures, including severe restrictions such as lockdowns, remain fundamental tools to contain the spread of COVID-19. A crucial point…
The death toll for Covid-19 may be reduced by dividing the population into two classes, the vulnerable and the fit, with different lockdown regimes. Instead of one reproduction number there now are four parameters. These make it possible to…
Assessing the economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic and public health policies is essential for a rapid recovery. In this paper, we analyze the impact of mobility contraction on furloughed workers and excess deaths in Italy. We provide a…
After the introduction of drastic containment measures aimed at stopping the epidemic contagion from SARS-CoV2, many governments have adopted a strategy based on a periodic relaxation of such measures in the face of a severe economic crisis…
We find UK 'local lockdowns' of cities and small regions, focused on limiting how many people a household can interact with and in what settings, are effective in turning the tide on rising positive COVID-19 cases. Yet, by focusing on…
Lockdown procedures have been proven successful in mitigating the spread of the viruses in this COVID-19 pandemic, but they also have devastating impact on the economy. We use a modified Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered-Deceased model with…
In order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, governments have often required regional or national lockdowns, which have caused extensive economic stagnation over broad areas as the shock of the lockdowns has diffused to other regions through…
Covid-19 is raging a devastating trail with the highest mortality-to-infected ratio ever for a pandemic. Lack of vaccine and therapeutic has rendered social exclusion through lockdown as the singular mode of containment. Harnessing the…
We formulate an optimal control problem to determine the lockdown policy to curb an epidemic where other control measures are not available yet. We present a unified framework to model the epidemic and economy that allows us to study the…
In the context of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, several reports and studies have attempted to model and predict the spread of the disease. There is also intense debate about policies for limiting the damage, both to health and to the…
Spectral analysis characterises oscillatory time series behaviours such as cycles, but accurate estimation requires reasonable numbers of observations. Current COVID-19 time series for many countries are short: pre- and post-lockdown series…
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is challenging every part of society. From a scientific point of view the first major task is to predict the dynamics of the pandemic, allowing governments to allocate proper resources and measures to fight it,…