AN international team of researchers led by Dr Guojun He, Associate Professor in Economics and Management & Strategy at HKU Business School, investigated how China’s strict lockdown af-fected non-COVID mortality. The study has been pub¬lished in the ‘Nature Hu¬man Behaviour Journal’. Facing the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandem¬ic, different countries adopted different measures to mitigate its impacts, ranging from one extreme, where governments imposed stringent measures to restrict human mobility imme¬diately after the outbreak, to the other extreme, where govern¬ments were reluctant to adopt any serious disease preventive measures and explicitly resorted to herd immunity.
Dr He’s research evalu¬ated the benefits and costs of different COVID policies by analysing the death registry data in China, serving as a ref¬erence to the policy-makers to consider the disease preven¬tion measures in the future. “There are competing argu¬ments about whether lock¬downs should be implemented,” Dr Guojun He explained.
“On the one hand, some ar¬gue that lockdowns could bring about very significant health damages to normal people. For example, human mobility restrictions reduced access to healthcare services and busi¬ness restrictions could lead to sharp economic disruption and massive layoffs, both of which may lead to higher overall mor¬tality.
On the other hand, virus containment policies could also cause unintended health ben¬efits because they encourage health-protecting behaviours (like wearing face masks and washing hands frequently), di¬minish risks associated with business activities (like improv¬ing air quality and reducing work and traffic accidents), and reduce transmission of other in¬fectious diseases (like seasonal influenza).
Thus, whether lockdowns bring about additional health gains or losses is ultimately an empirical question,” He said. Using death registry data that covered one-quarter of the Chi¬nese population, the research team compared non-COVID mortality before, during, and after the “lockdowns” between two groups of cities: those with strict anti-contagion policies and those without.
They found that lock¬down measures reduced the number of deaths from other causes by 4.6 per cent, prevent¬ing 54,000 deaths from other causes during the initial 50 days of strict “lockdown.” Surprising¬ly, the health benefits became even greater after the lock¬down policies loosened. Mortal-ity from other causes decreased 12.5 per cent in the 115 days after the lockdown, leading to 293,000 lives saved across the coun¬try from non-COVID deaths. To understand why, Dr Guojun He and his co-authors found that less traffic and industrial activities led to less air pollu¬tion, in turn leading to a large drop in cardiovascular disease deaths. Areas that were initially very polluted saw the greatest improvement, suggesting bet¬ter air quality can be vital in preventing premature deaths. Social distancing and an in¬crease in sanitizing surfaces, hand washing and mask-wear¬ing also contributed to fewer deaths from infectious diseases. “Our research also points to the direction to improve pop¬ulation health after the lock¬down measures are lifted, if the government can continue its effort to control pollution and the public are willing to keep good personal hygiene, these short-term benefits will be¬come long-lasting,” said Dr He. The study was a joint effort of scholars from multiple insti¬tutions.
The co-corresponding authors of the study included Guojun He from HKU, George F. Gao and Maigeng Zhou from the Chinese CDC. Jinlei Qi from the Chinese CDC and Dandan Zhang from Peking University are the co-first authors of the study.
SOURCE: ANI
