The cost of waiting and the death toll in Italy during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic

Alessandro Girardi; Marco Ventura

doi:10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104859

The cost of waiting and the death toll in Italy during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic

Health Policy. 2023 Aug:134:104859. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104859. Epub 2023 Jun 15.

Authors

Alessandro Girardi¹, Marco Ventura²

Affiliations

¹ Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: alessandro.girardi@upbilancio.it.
² Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: marco.ventura@uniroma1.it.

Abstract

This paper documents how a prompter implementation of stricter policy measures in Italy would have reduced by about one-fourth of total COVID-19-related deaths during the first wave of the pandemic. The empirical evidence suggests that rigid but timely restrictions would have been a more effective policy tool than implementing progressively stricter measures over an extended period.

Keywords: Covid-19; Lockdown; Synthetic control method.

MeSH terms

COVID-19*
Humans
Italy / epidemiology
Pandemics
Policy