Chen M, Dong Y, Shi X, Zhuang J. Global analysis of the COVID-19 policy activity levels and evolution patterns: A cross-sectional study.
Health Sci Rep 2023;
6:e1350. [PMID:
37342293 PMCID:
PMC10277603 DOI:
10.1002/hsr2.1350]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/26/2022] [Revised: 05/28/2023] [Accepted: 06/01/2023] [Indexed: 06/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Background and Aims
Since the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a large number of government policies have been implemented worldwide in response to the global spread of COVID-19. This paper aims at developing a data-driven analysis to answer the three research questions: (a) Compared to the pandemic development, are the global government COVID-19 policies sufficiently active? (b) What are the differences and characteristics in the policy activity levels at the country level? (c) What types of COVID-19 policy patterns are forming?
Methods
Using the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker data set, we present a global analysis of the COVID-19 policy activity levels and evolution patterns from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022, based on the differential expression-sliding window analysis (DE-SWAN) algorithm and the clustering ensemble algorithm.
Results
Within the period under study, the results indicate that (a) the global government policy responses to COVID-19 are very active, and the policy activity levels are significantly higher than those of global pandemic developments; (b) a high activity of policy is positively correlated to pandemic prevention at the country level; and (c) a high human development index (HDI) score is negatively correlated to the country policy activity level. Furthermore, we propose to categorize the global policy evolution patterns into three categories: (i) Mainstream (152 countries); (ii) China; and (iii) Others (34 countries).
Conclusion
This work is one of the few studies that quantitatively explores the evolutionary characteristics of global government policies on COVID-19, and our results provide some new perspectives on global policy activity levels and evolution patterns.
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