Effects of Closures and Openings on Public Health in the Time of COVID-19: A Cross-Country and Temporal Trend Analysis

Abstract

Many countries mandated social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 to 2022 that variously included opening hours restrictions on hospitality and retail, economy-wide closures, and additional international border controls. We analyzed whether more restrictive (hereafter, closures) or less restrictive (hereafter, openings) social distancing measures changed the short-term trends in the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and ICU patients in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our analysis uses a “before-and-after” trend analysis (decremental/incremental and growth/decay trends) to compare the trends of epidemic indicators before and after each closure or opening event. Results show that, in general, and for these three countries: (a) closures resulted in reduced trend growth in adverse COVID-19 public health outcomes and (b) openings resulted in increased trend growth for the three selected measures of public health.