ArticleEconomics and human biology2021
Early adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions and COVID-19 mortality.
Article in Economics and human biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effectiveness of social distancing measures and lockdowns for reducing transmission of COVID-19 in non-healthcare, community-based settings.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Pooled it
- The invasive GAS puzzle in Italy: genomic insights from a hospital cohort in a fragmented surveillance landscape.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Do more stringent policies reduce daily COVID-19 case counts? Evidence from Canadian provinces.Economic analysis and policy · 2023Article
- The short-term impact of the 2020 pandemic lockdown on employment in Greece.Empirical economics · 2023Article
- A Survey of Public Health Failures During COVID-19.Cureus · 2022Review
- Experts vs. policymakers in the COVID-19 policy response.Journal of economic behavior & organization · 2022Article
- Mass gathering events and the spread of infectious diseases: Evidence from the early growth phase of COVID-19.Economics and human biology · 2022Article
- Facing an unfortunate trade-off: policy responses, lessons and spill-overs during the COVID-19 pandemic.Economics and human biology · 2021Article
- The intensity of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions and labor market outcomes in the public sector.Journal of regional science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe have adopted social distancing measures. Yet, establishing the causal effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) is difficult because they do not occur arbitrarily. We exploit a quasi-random source of variation for identification purposes -namely, regional differences in the placement on the pandemic curve following an unexpected and nationwide lockdown. Our results reveal that regions where the outbreak had just started when the lockdown was implemented had 1.62 fewer daily deaths per 100,000 inhabitants when compared to regions for which the lockdown arrived 10+ days after the pandemic's outbreak. As a result, a total of 4,642 total deaths (232 deaths/daily) could have been avoided by the end of our period of study -a figure representing 23% of registered deaths in Spain at the time. We rule out differential pre-COVID mortality trends and self-distancing behaviors across the compared regions prior to the swift lockdown, which was also uniformly observed nationwide. In addition, we provide supporting evidence for contagion deceleration as the main mechanism behind the effectiveness of the early adoption of NPIs in lowering the death rate, rather than an increased healthcare capacity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.