ArticlePloS one2021
Government responses and COVID-19 deaths: Global evidence across multiple pandemic waves.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 96 papers, 4 of them syntheses 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.
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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
96 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 179 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 testing strategies in reducing COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions in containing COVID-19 pandemic after the roll-out of coronavirus vaccines: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Early suppression policies protected pregnant women from COVID-19 in 2020: A population-based surveillance from the Nordic countries.Acta obstetricia et gynecologica Scandinavica · 2024Pooled it
- The prevalence of probable mental health disorders among hospital healthcare workers during COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of affective disorders · 2023Pooled it
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress and other psychological factors in pregnant women giving birth during the first wave of the pandemic.Reproductive health · 2022Trial
- How Swedish healthcare workers managed the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic: sensemaking across organisational, interpersonal and individual levels.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Harmonising Depression and Anxiety Measures Across International Cohorts: A Framework Validated Using Measurement Invariance.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2026Article
- Article
- The impact of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions on notifiable infectious diseases in Poland: a comprehensive analysis from 2014-2022.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Excess mortality in Europe estimated by EuroMOMO during the COVID-19 pandemic and previous influenza seasons.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The impact of policy restrictions and mobility changes on excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in The Netherlands, 2020-2022.PloS one · 2026Article
- Lessons learned from responses to COVID-19 pandemic in rural, Indigenous, and isolated populations in the US and India: a qualitative study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- How Will AI Shape the Future of Pandemic Response? Early Clues From Data Analytics.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Review
- Quality Assessment of Health Information on Social Media During a Public Health Crisis: Infodemiology Study.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospital admissions for psychiatric disorders: results from the multicentre study on the Italian population "COVID-19 and Mental Health" (CoMeH).BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Experiences of U.S. frontline physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2025Article
- Sustained excess all-cause mortality post COVID-19 in 21 countries: an ecological investigation.International journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 testing strategies.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Article
- Comparing lagged impacts of mobility changes and environmental factors on COVID-19 waves in rural and urban India: A Bayesian spatiotemporal modelling study.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Spatio-temporal forecasting of COVID-19 cases in the Netherlands for source and contact tracing.International journal of population data science · 2025Article
36 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We provide an assessment of the impact of government closure and containment measures on deaths from COVID-19 across sequential waves of the COVID-19 pandemic globally. Daily data was collected on a range of containment and closure policies for 186 countries from January 1, 2020 until March 11th, 2021. These data were combined into an aggregate stringency index (SI) score for each country on each day (range: 0-100). Countries were divided into successive waves via a mathematical algorithm to identify peaks and troughs of disease. Within our period of analysis, 63 countries experienced at least one wave, 40 countries experienced two waves, and 10 countries saw three waves, as defined by our approach. Within each wave, regression was used to assess the relationship between the strength of government stringency and subsequent deaths related to COVID-19 with a number of controls for time and country-specific demographic, health system, and economic characteristics. Across the full period of our analysis and 113 countries, an increase of 10 points on the SI was linked to 6 percentage points (P < 0.001, 95% CI = [5%, 7%]) lower average daily deaths. In the first wave, in countries that ultimately experiences 3 waves of the pandemic to date, ten additional points on the SI resulted in lower average daily deaths by 21 percentage points (P < .001, 95% CI = [8%, 16%]). This effect was sustained in the third wave with reductions in deaths of 28 percentage points (P < .001, 95% CI = [13%, 21%]). Moreover, interaction effects show that government policies were effective in reducing deaths in all waves in all groups of countries. These findings highlight the enduring importance of non-pharmaceutical responses to COVID-19 over time.
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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.