Impacts of Countermeasure Program on the Covid-19 Pandemic in Asian Countries

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has produced a large impact on various economic sectors. In this paper, we analyze the policies that were implemented during the epidemic using weekly data between March 16, 2020 and August 30, 2021 from over 70 economies in Asia (all countries in Asia and all provinces in China), with the observation number is 5,865 observations. The policies included in this investigation on their efficacy are those declared as School and Workplace Closures, Cancellation of Public Events and Gatherings, Stay-at-Home Restrictions, Face Coverings, Public Information Campaigns, International and Domestic Travel, Testing and Contact Tracing, Vaccination Policy, etc. We employed various models to find the best estimates and found out that the Poisson lasso model outperforms the others. The Poisson lasso model is remarkably helpful for variable selection as it shrinks the parameter values of unexplainable variables into zero. The results show some policies can decrease the total cases after one month implementation including the vaccination policies of the universal availability policy for vaccination and testing anyone showing COVID-19 symptoms, public information campaigns, international support. Some policy measures, however, were observed to be slow in decreasing the total number of cases such as the prohibition of mass gatherings and public events, international travel controls, closure of some business sectors or work categories, recommended closing or significantly reducing volume/route/means of transport available (especially public transportation), and not to leave home unless it is extremely necessary (stay-at-home requirements).