ArticleFrontiers in public health2022
The Effects of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions on COVID-19 Mortality: A Generalized Synthetic Control Approach Across 169 Countries.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 26 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions in containing COVID-19 pandemic after the roll-out of coronavirus vaccines: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2024Pooled 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
- Physio-metabolic and clinical consequences of wearing face masks-Systematic review with meta-analysis and comprehensive evaluation.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- The impact of China's non-pharmaceutical interventions on economic growth during COVID-19: a provincial-level panel analysis.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Review
- Optimal pandemic control strategies and cost-effectiveness of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions in the United States.BMC global and public health · 2025Article
- One-year post lockdown trajectories of mental health and impact of COVID-19 lockdown-related factors.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- What Lessons can Be Learned From the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic?International journal of public health · 2025Review
- Short, stringent lockdowns halted SARS-CoV-2 transmissions in Danish municipalities.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- SARS-CoV-2 in Mozambican primary school-aged children at Maputo City and Province: a cross-sectional study from a low-income country.BMC pediatrics · 2024Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on infectious diseases reporting.Journal of preventive medicine and hygiene · 2024Article
- Synthetic Controls for Implementation Science: Opportunities for HIV Program Evaluation Using Routinely Collected Data.Current HIV/AIDS reports · 2024Review
- Article
- Influence of Seasonality and Public-Health Interventions on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northern Europe.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- how these findings canPublic transport: lessons learned by the sector through the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC public health · 2023Article
- The attitude and knowledge of pediatricians and family physicians toward COVID-19 vaccination in children: A cross-sectional study.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2023Article
- Article
- Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) for Population Health and Health Inequalities.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Review
- Attitudes and perceptions towards public health safety measures during a global health crisis: Social and personal consequences.PloS one · 2023Article
- Effects of the vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 on infections and on hospitalizations in European countries.SN business & economics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Importance: Governments have introduced non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in response to the pandemic outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). While NPIs aim at preventing fatalities related to COVID-19, the previous literature on their efficacy has focused on infections and on data of the first half of 2020. Still, findings of early NPI studies may be subject to underreporting and missing timeliness of reporting of cases. Moreover, the low variation in treatment timing during the first wave makes identification of robust treatment effects difficult. Objective: We enhance the literature on the effectiveness of NPIs with respect to the period, the number of countries, and the analytical approach. Design Setting and Participants: To circumvent problems of reporting and treatment variation, we analyse data on daily confirmed COVID-19-related deaths per capita from Our World in Data, and on 10 different NPIs from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) for 169 countries from 1st July 2020 to 1st September 2021. To identify the causal effects of introducing NPIs on COVID-19-related fatalities, we apply the generalized synthetic control (GSC) method to each NPI, while controlling for the remaining NPIs, weather conditions, vaccinations, and NPI-residualized COVID-19 cases. This mitigates the influence of selection into treatment and allows to model flexible post-treatment trajectories. Results: We do not find substantial and consistent COVID-19-related fatality-reducing effects of any NPI under investigation. We see a tentative change in the trend of COVID-19-related deaths around 30 days after strict stay-at-home rules and to a slighter extent after workplace closings have been implemented. As a proof of concept, our model is able to identify a fatality-reducing effect of COVID-19 vaccinations. Furthermore, our results are robust with respect to various crucial sensitivity checks. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that many implemented NPIs may not have exerted a significant COVID-19-related fatality-reducing effect. However, NPIs might have contributed to mitigate COVID-19-related fatalities by preventing exponential growth in deaths. Moreover, vaccinations were effective in reducing COVID-19-related deaths.
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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.