Rethinking Lockdown Policies in the Pre-Vaccine Era of COVID-19: A Configurational Perspective.

Abstract

The significance of lockdown policies for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is widely recognized. However, most studies have focused on individual lockdown measures. The effectiveness of lockdown policy combinations has not been examined from a configurational perspective. This research applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine different lockdown policy combinations associated with high-epidemic situations in 84 countries. A high-epidemic situation can occur through three different "weak-confined" patterns of lockdown policy combinations. The findings demonstrate that a combination of lockdown policies is more successful than any single lockdown policy, whereas the absence of several key measures in policy combinations can lead to a high-epidemic situation. The importance of international travel controls can become obscured when they are the only measures adopted, and a high-epidemic situation can still arise where restrictions are placed on international travel but not on public transport or when workplaces are closed but schools remain open.

• Authors: Ziang Zhang, Chao Liu, Robin Nunkoo, Vivek A Sunnassee, Xiaoyan Chen
• Journal: International journal of environmental research and public health (Int J Environ Res Public Health) Vol. 19 Issue 12 (06 10 2022) ISSN: 1660-4601 [Electronic] Switzerland
• PMID: 35742409 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Vaccines

Topics

• COVID-19 (epidemiology, prevention & control)
• Communicable Disease Control
• Humans
• Pandemics (prevention & control)
• Policy
• SARS-CoV-2
• Vaccines