Do prevention and control measures work? Evidence from the outbreak of COVID-19 in China

In the face of COVID-19, an emerging infectious disease, in addition to the classic non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, social, China also adopted strict mobility restrictions including inter-administrative districts travel restrictions, which severely affect residents' lives and almost completely stopped production activities at cost of a huge economic and social cost. In this paper, we develop the model of Dirk Brockmann and Dirk Helbing (2013) to theoretically explain the impact mechanism of prevention and control measures on the spread of the epidemic. Then, we divide the measures taken in China into two categories: mobility restrictions and other non-pharmacological interventions (O-NPI), and apply econometric approach to empirically test the effects of them. We find that although both of the two measures play a good role in controlling the development of the epidemic, the effect shows significant difference in different regions, and both the two measures had no significant effects in low-risk regions; Further, we prove that measures taken in a low-risk region is mainly against the imported cases, while a high-risk region has to defend against both imported cases and spread from within; The rapid and accurate transmission of information, a higher protection awareness of the public, and a stronger confidence of residents can promote the implementation of the measures. •COVID-19 epidemiological and epidemic control measures -related data of China during the outbreak are collected.•We use real-time data to explore the effect of COVID-19 control measures taken in China.•The public health measures implemented during the COVID-19 outbreak in China are divided into mobility restrictions and O-NPI.•Both of the two kinds of public health measures have no statistically significant effect in the low-risk areas.•We contend that measures should be tailored to the specific local and regional conditions.