Evaluating the policy of closing bars and restaurants in Cataluña and its effects on mobility and COVID19 incidence

The world has gone through unprecedented changes since the global pandemic hit. During the early phase of the pandemic, the absence of known drugs or pharmaceutical treatments forced governments to introduce different policies in order to help reduce contagion rates and manage the economic consequen...

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Published inScientific reports Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 9132 - 19
Main Authors Smith, Matthew, Ponce-de-Leon, Miguel, Valencia, Alfonso
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 07.06.2022
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects
631/181/2469
692/700/459/284
704/844/2787
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - prevention & control
Economics
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Incidence
Mobility
multidisciplinary
Pandemics
Pandemics - prevention & control
Public Policy
Restaurants
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:The world has gone through unprecedented changes since the global pandemic hit. During the early phase of the pandemic, the absence of known drugs or pharmaceutical treatments forced governments to introduce different policies in order to help reduce contagion rates and manage the economic consequences of the pandemic. This paper analyses the causal impact on mobility and COVID19 incidence from policy makers in Cataluña, Spain. We use anonymized phone-based mobility data together with reported incidence and apply a series of causal impact models frequently used in econometrics and policy evaluation in order to measure the policies impact. We analyse the case of Cataluña and the public policy decision of closing all bars and restaurants down for a 5 week period between 2020-16-10 and 2020-23-11. We find that this decision led to a significant reduction in mobility. It not only led to reductions in mobility but from a behavioural economics standpoint, we highlight how people responded to the policy decision. Moreover, the policy of closing bars and restaurants slowed the incidence rate of COVID19 after a time lag has been taken into account. These findings are significant since governments worldwide want to restrict movements of people in order to slow down COVID19 incidence without infringing on their rights directly.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-11531-y