A Study on The Effectiveness of Lock-down Measures to Control The Spread of COVID-19

Abstract: The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019-2020 (COVID-19) is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This pathogenic virus is able to spread asymptotically during its incubation stage through a vulnerable population. Given the state of healthcare, policymakers were urged to contain the spread of infection, minimize stress on the health systems and ensure public safety. Most effective tool that was at their disposal was to close non-essential business and issue a stay home order. In this paper we consider techniques to measure the effectiveness of stringency measures adopted by governments across the world. Analyzing effectiveness of control measures like lock-down allows us to understand whether the decisions made were optimal and resulted in a reduction of burden on the healthcare system. In specific we consider using a synthetic control to construct alternative scenarios and understand what would have been the effect on health if less stringent measures were adopted. We present analysis for The State of New York, United States, Italy and The Indian capital city Delhi and show how lock-down measures has helped and what the counterfactual scenarios would have been in comparison to the current state of affairs. We show that in The State of New York the number of deaths could have been 6 times higher, and in Italy, the number of deaths could have been 3 times higher by 26th of June, 2020.