ABSTRACT
The spread of COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020 prompted state and local governments to implement a variety of policies, including stay-at-home (SAH) orders and mandatory mask requirements, aimed at reducing infection rates and the severity of the pandemic’s impact. We implement a discrete choice experiment survey in three major U.S. States - California, Georgia, and Illinois - to empirically quantify individuals’ willingness to stay (WTS) home, measured as the number of weeks of a potential new SAH order, to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 disease and explore factors leading to their heterogeneous WTS. Our results demonstrate broad support for statewide mask mandates. In addition, the estimate of WTS to lower new positive cases is quite large, approximately five and half weeks, even though staying home lowers utility. We also find that individuals recognize the trade-offs between case reduction and economic slowdown stemming from SAH orders when they decide to stay home or not. Finally, pandemic related factors such as age, ability to work from home, and unemployment status are the major drivers of the heterogeneity in individuals’ WTS.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
Background: After the outbreak of Coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19), stringent lockdown measures were imposed in Wuhan between January 23, 2020 and April 8, 2020. To provide evidence on the post-lockdown risk of COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, the city government conducted a citywide nucleic acid screening of SARS-CoV-2 infection between May 14 and June 1, 2020. Methods: All city residents aged [≥]6 years were potentially eligible to participate the screening programme. The rate of detection of asymptomatic infected cases was calculated, and their demographic and geographic distributions were investigated. ArcGIS 10.0 was used to draw a geographic distribution of asymptomatic infected persons. Results: The screening programme recruited a total of 9,899,828 persons (response rate, 92.9%). The screening found no newly confirmed patients with COVID-19, and identified 300 asymptomatic infected cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000). In addition, 107 of 34,424 previously recovered patients with a history of COVID-19 diagnosis were tested positive (relapse rate, 0.31%). Virus culture of SARS-CoV-2 was negative for all 300 asymptomatic cases and all 107 recovered COVID-19 patients. A total of 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases were traced and all of them had a negative nucleic acid testing result. Conclusions: Prevalence of COVID-19 nucleic acid test positivity was very low in the Wuhan general population, in recovered cases and in contacts of asymptomatic cases, five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown. These findings help resolve concerns about the post-lockdown risk of COVID-19 epidemic, and promote the recovery of economy and normal social life in Wuhan.