High impositions and stringent measures of countries to cope with COVID-19 reduce economic performance and do not lessen final fatality rate

Abstract

The goal of this study is to develop a comparative analysis between countries having introduced a high or low level of restrictions and control measures in society to cope with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic crisis to assess if a policy response based on many pervasive compulsory measures is more effective to support a reduction of negative impact of COVID-19 on health of people and socioeconomic systems. In particular, the idea here is to analyze if countries with high restrictions and mandatory measures have lower fatality rates of COVID-19 and better economic performances than countries having policy responses based on little restrictions. The results of this analysis here seem to be that: Ž a strict policy of many restrictions and obligations does not reduce negative effects of COVID-19 pandemic in society in terms of lower mortality per 1,000 people and a lower-case fatality rate than countries with little restrictions (findings here show 1.19 vs. 0.89 and 0.82% vs. 0.43%, for countries with high and low restrictions respectively) Ž countries with high restrictions and obligations reduce the economic performance in terms of lower average growth of quarterly Gross Domestic Product than countries with little restrictions (0.14% vs. 0.38%, for countries with high and low restrictions respectively). This result can be explained with the fact that harsh containment policies are not a sufficient strategy to reduce the negative impact of new coronavirus in society, because there are manifold factors that support the diffusion of the novel coronavirus and mortality of COVID-19. Many countries applied hard and pervasive restrictions with the objective to reduce pandemic diffusion and support economic growth, but the evidence of this study shows that it is not a policy having effectiveness. These results can provide main information to extend knowledge in these topics to improve the crisis management and design best practices and effective policy responses to cope with COVID-19 and similar pandemic crisis.