Is compulsory home quarantine less effective than centralized quarantine in controlling the COVID-19 outbreak? Evidence from Hong Kong.

ABSTRACT: Faced with the global spread of COVID-19, the Hong Kong government imposed compulsory home quarantine on all overseas arrivals, while cities in mainland China and Macau adopted a more stringent centralized quarantine approach. This study evaluates the effectiveness of compulsory home quarantine as a means of pandemic control. Combining epidemiological data with traditional socioeconomic and meteorological data from over 250 cities, we employ the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) to construct a counterfactual "synthetic Hong Kong". This model simulates the infection trends for a hypothetical situation in which HK adopts centralized quarantine measures, and compares them to actual infection numbers. Results suggest that home quarantine would have been less effective than centralized quarantine

SUBMITTER: Zhu P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8327569 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature