Are We #StayingHome to Flatten the Curve?

The recent spread of COVID-19 across the U.S. led to concerted efforts by states to ``flatten the curve" through the adoption of stay-at-home mandates that encourage individuals to reduce travel and maintain social distance. Combining data on changes in travel activity with COVID-19 health outcomes and state policy adoption timing, we characterize nationwide changes in mobility patterns and isolate the portion attributable to statewide mandates. We find evidence of dramatic nationwide declines in mobility prior to adoption of any statewide mandates. Once states adopt a mandate, we estimate further mandate-induced declines between 2.1 and 7.0 percentage points across methods that account for states' differences in travel behavior prior to policy adoption. In addition, we investigate the effects of stay-at-home mandates on changes in COVID-19 health outcomes while controlling for pre-trends and observed pre-treatment mobility patterns. We estimate mandate-induced declines between 0.13 and 0.17 in deaths (5.6 to 6.0 in hospitalizations) per 100 thousand across methods. Across 43 adopting states, this represents 23,366-30,144 fewer deaths (and roughly one million averted hospitalizations) for the months of March and April - which indicates that death rates could have been 42-54% higher had states not adopted statewide policies. We further find evidence that changes in mobility patterns prior to adoption of statewide policies also played a role in reducing COVID-19 mortality and morbidity. Adding in averted deaths due to pre-mandate social distancing behavior, we estimate a total of 48-71,000 averted deaths from COVID-19 for the two-month period. Given that the actual COVID-19 death toll for March and April was 55,922, our estimates suggest that deaths would have been 1.86-2.27 times what they were absent any stay-at-home mandates during this period. These estimates represent a lower bound on the health impacts of stay-at-home policies, as they do not account for spillovers or undercounting of COVID-19 mortality. Our findings indicate that early behavior changes and later statewide policies reduced death rates and helped attenuate the negative consequences of COVID-19. Further, our findings of substantial reductions in mobility prior to state-level policies convey important policy implications for re-opening.Take Away Link https://are.berkeley.edu/sites/are.berkeley.edu/files/PolicyTakeAway_Web.pd

Love thy neighbour? Coronavirus politics and their impact on EU freedoms and rule of law in the Schengen Area. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 2020-04, April 2020

Restrictions on international and intra-EU traffic of persons have been at the heart of the political responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Border controls and suspensions of entry and exist have been presented as key policy priorities to prevent the spread of the virus in the EU. These measures pose however fundamental questions as to the raison d’être of the Union, and the foundations of the Single Market, the Schengen system and European citizenship. They are also profoundly intrusive regarding the fundamental rights of individuals and in many cases derogate domestic and EU rule of law checks and balances over executive decisions. This Paper examines the legality of cross-border mobility restrictions introduced in the name of COVID-19. It provides an in-depth typology and comprehensive assessment of measures including the reintroduction of internal border controls, restrictions of specific international traffic modes and intra-EU and international ‘travel bans’. Many of these have been adopted in combination with declarations of a ‘state of emergency’

EU solidarity and policy in fighting infectious diseases: state of play, obstacles, citizen preferences and ways forward

In this paper we confront the role the EU traditionally plays in the domain of health with the urgent need for collective action triggered by the corona virus pandemic. In the face of such a crisis, we argue that the joint procurement, stockpiling and allocation of medical countermeasures is a key component of true European solidarity, besides maintaining the integrity of the Single Market. We present the first results of a survey experiment taken before the current crisis on citizens’ attitudes towards centralizing at the EU level of policies to combat infectious diseases, which indicates considerable support. We conclude that a more robust policy framework with substantial centralization of procurement, stockpiling and allocation is warranted

Monitoring Covid-19 contagion growth in Europe. CEPS Working Document No 2020/03, March 2020

We present an econometric model which can be employed to monitor the evolution of the COVID-19 contagion curve. The model is a Poisson autoregression of the daily new observed cases, and can dynamically show the evolution of contagion in different time periods and locations, allowing for the comparative evaluation of policy approaches. We present timely results for nine European countries currently hit by the virus. From the findings, we draw four main conclusions. First, countries experiencing an explosive process (currently France, Italy and Spain), combined with high persistence of contagion shocks (observed in most countries under investigation), require swift policy measures such as quarantine, diffuse testing and even complete lockdown. Second, in countries with high persistence but lower contagion growth (currently Germany) careful monitoring should be coupled with at least “mild” restrictions such as physical distancing or isolation of specific areas. Third, in some countries, such as Norway and Denmark, where trends seem to be relatively under control and depend on daily contingencies, with low persistence, the approach to restrictive measures should be more cautious since there is a risk that social costs outweigh the benefits. Fourth, countries with a limited set of preventive actions in place (such as the Netherlands, Switzerl

Flattening the Recession Curve Comparing Initial Fiscal Responses to the Corona Crisis Across the EU1. BertelsmannStiuftung Policy paper 9 April 2020

While the ongoing pandemic affects all European economies, we show that it is likely to cause much more economic damage in some member states than in others. Early fiscal crisis responses by EU governments do not reflect these differences. If anything, countries which are likely to be especially vulnerable are currently committing fewer fiscal resources to fighting the economic fallout than others. A joint European policy response to share the fiscal burden of this crisis is, therefore, urgently needed

Estimation of COVID-19 spread curves integrating global data and borrowing information

Currently, novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a big threat to global health. The rapid spread of the virus has created pandemic, and countries all over the world are struggling with a surge in COVID-19 infected cases. There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19: information on the disease is very limited and scattered even if it exists. This motivates the use of data integration, combining data from diverse sources and eliciting useful information with a unified view of them. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian hierarchical model that integrates global data for real-time prediction of infection trajectory for multiple countries. Because the proposed model takes advantage of borrowing information across multiple countries, it outperforms an existing individual country-based model. As fully Bayesian way has been adopted, the model provides a powerful predictive tool endowed with uncertainty quantification. Additionally, a joint variable selection technique has been integrated into the proposed modeling scheme, which aimed to identify possible country-level risk factors for severe disease due to COVID-19