The Progression of COVID-19 and the Government Response in China

Abstract

The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Infectious Disease-2019) was first reported at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. On 30 January 2020, the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency for the novel coronavirus. On 11 March 2020, the WHO officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. Due to the differences in population distribution, economic structure, degree of damage and other factors, the affected countries have introduced policies tailored to local conditions as a response to the pandemic, leading to different economic and social impacts. Considering the highly heterogeneous spreading of COVID-19 across regions, this paper takes a specific country (China) as a case study of the spread of the disease and national intervention models for the COVID-19 pandemic. The research period of this article is from 17 December to 26 April 2020, because this time period basically covered the important time nodes of the epidemic in China from animal-to-human transmission, limited human-to-human transmission, epidemic to gradual control. This study is useful for comparing the effectiveness of different interventions at various stages of epidemic development within the same country and can also promote the comparison of the epidemic response interventions of different countries. Based on the conclusions of the model simulation, this article evaluates the dual impact of the epidemic on people’s wellbeing and the economy.