Rethinking Lockdown Policies in the Pre-Vaccine Era of COVID-19: A Configurational Perspective

Abstract

The significance of lockdown policies for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is widely recognized. However, most studies have focused on individual lockdown measures. The effectiveness of lockdown policy combinations has not been examined from a configurational perspective. This research applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine different lockdown policy combinations associated with high-epidemic situations in 84 countries. A high-epidemic situation can occur through three different “weak-confined” patterns of lockdown policy combinations. The findings demonstrate that a combination of lockdown policies is more successful than any single lockdown policy, whereas the absence of several key measures in policy combinations can lead to a high-epidemic situation. The importance of international travel controls can become obscured when they are the only measures adopted, and a high-epidemic situation can still arise where restrictions are placed on international travel but not on public transport or when workplaces are closed but schools remain open.

A Cross-Sectional Survey of Different Types of School Bullying before and during COVID-19 in Shantou City, China

“…In 2021, Chinese epidemic prevention and control policies were based on the general strategies of "defending externally against importation, defending internally against rebound" and "dynamic zero-case" policy [40]. Therefore, mental health problems (such as anxiety and depression) are likely to have arisen as direct results of, for example, blocked access, frequent nucleic acid testing and fewer outings [41,42]. Several studies have shown COVID-19 related anxiety to be associated with psychiatric health problems among adults with uncommon disorders and that the prevalence of anxiety has been higher during the pandemic than before the pandemic [43].…”

Assessing the impact of local context and priorities regarding domestic disease outbreaks and imported risk on early pandemic response: Cross-continental comparisons

“…At the beginning of an outbreak of a highly transmissible infectious disease such as COVID-19, the primary focus is on containing its spread through measures such as city lockdowns while effective vaccines or treatments are still in development ( 1 , 2 ). Previous studies have shown that these containment measures can be effective in slowing the spread of the disease and reducing transmission ( 3 , 4 ).…”