Estimating the Containment Effectiveness and Economic Cost of Inner-city Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions

TL;DR

This study analyzes the trade-offs between containment effectiveness and economic costs of non-pharmaceutical interventions in a Chinese city, using detailed individual trajectory data to inform urban epidemic control policies.

Contribution

It introduces a data-driven evaluation framework that considers heterogeneity in individual behavior and assesses various NPIs' effectiveness and costs.

Findings

Stringent NPIs at low activation thresholds optimize epidemic control with minimal economic impact.

Significant variation in NPI outcomes depending on activation mechanisms and initial transmission scales.

A comprehensive two-dimensional framework for evaluating NPI effectiveness and economic costs.

Abstract

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are crucial for controlling pandemics, but existing research often overlooks the heterogeneity of individual behavior, which can lead to inaccurate evaluations of the effectiveness of strategies. In this paper, we use a large dataset of fine-grained real-world individual trajectory data from a major Chinese city to examine the trade-off between the epidemic containment effectiveness and economic cost of different NPIs. Our findings reveal significant variations in the outcomes of different NPIs across activation mechanisms and initial scales of undetected transmission. Based on these results, we construct a two-dimensional evaluation framework that comprehensively evaluates the impact of both the containment effectiveness and economic cost, which suggests that implementing stringent strategies-such as lockdown or contact tracing-at low activation thresholds can achieve optimal epidemic control with minimal economic cost. Our study provides a data-driven decision-making framework for understanding the implementation effectiveness and applicability of emergency management policies within urban systems.