A new study has revealed details how China effectively contained coronavirus in the middle of February.
Published in the Journal of Population Economics on Thursday, it
suggests that more than 1.4 million infections and 56,000 deaths were
avoided due to national and provincial measures imposed in late January.
The study,
led by Xi Chen, President of the China Health Policy and Management
Society, cited local and cross-city transmissions of COVID-19 in the
country between January 19 and February 29.
The team implemented a machine learning approach to select
instrumental variables that strongly predict virus transmission among
the rich exogenous weather characteristics.
They examined the role of various factors, including public health
measures that encourage social distancing in local communities.
The study shows that stringent quarantine, city lockdown, and local
public health measures imposed since late January significantly
decreased the virus transmission rate.
The most effective measure was found to be “city lockdown” first,
followed by “closed management of communities” and “family outdoor
restrictions,” according to the study.
Population outflow from the outbreak source region posed a higher
risk to the destination regions than other factors including geographic
proximity and similarity in economic conditions, according to the study.
“The results of the study have rich implications for ongoing global
efforts in containment of COVID-19,” Chen, a professor at Yale School
of Public Health, told Xinhua in an interview.
Coronavirus has claimed 95,000 lives globally with over 1.6million cases.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says there are 11,000 cases of in the continent with 558 deaths.
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