Government management capacities and the containment of COVID-19: A repeated cross-sectional study across Chinese cities

Objectives: Better understanding of the dynamics of the COVID-19 (2019-novel coronavirus disease) pandemic to curb its spread is now a global imperative. While travel restrictions and control measures have been shown to limit the spread of the disease spread, the effectiveness of the enforcement of those measures should depend on the strength of the government. Whether, and how, the government plays a role in fighting the disease, however, has not been investigated. Here, we show that government management capacities are critical for the containment of the disease.

Setting: We conduct a statistical analysis based on cross-city comparisons within China. China has undergone almost the entire cycle of the anti-coronavirus campaign, which allows us to trace the full dynamics of the outbreak, with homogeneity in standards for statistics recording.

Participants: Not available.

Primary and secondary outcome measures: Outcome measures include city-specific COVID-19 case incidence and r...