Explore the vast range of titles available.

Community transmission of the new coronavirus is occurring in several parts of the United States, and travel bans and mandatory quarantines alone cannot end the outbreak. Many public health and legal scholars believe that more constructive tools are needed.

In New Zealand, rapid, science-based risk assessment linked to early, decisive government action was critical to containing Covid-19. The country is now in the postelimination stage, which comes with its own uncertainties.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis. Many countries have implemented restrictions on population movement to slow the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and prevent health systems from becoming overwhelmed; some have instituted full or partial lockdowns. However, lockdowns and other extreme restrictions cannot be sustained for the long term in the hope that there will be an effective vaccine or treatment for COVID-19. Governments worldwide now face the common challenge of easing lockdowns and restrictions while balancing various health, social, and economic concerns. To facilitate cross-country learning, this Health Policy paper uses an adapted framework to examine the approaches taken by nine high-income countries and regions that have started to ease COVID-19 restrictions: five in the Asia Pacific region (ie, Hong Kong [Special Administrative Region], Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea) and four in Europe (ie, Germany, Norway, Spain, and the UK). This comparative analysis presents important lessons to be learnt from the experiences of these countries and regions. Although the future of the virus is unknown at present, countries should continue to share their experiences, shield populations who are at risk, and suppress transmission to save lives.

The novel coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) in mainland China has rapidly spread across the globe. Within 2 mo since the outbreak was first reported on December 31, 2019, a total of 566 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS CoV-2) cases have been confirmed in 26 other countries. Travel restrictions and border control measures have been enforced in China and other countries to limit the spread of the outbreak. We estimate the impact of these control measures and investigate the role of the airport travel network on the global spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. Our results show that the daily risk of exporting at least a single SARS CoV-2 case from mainland China via international travel exceeded 95% on January 13, 2020. We found that 779 cases (95% CI: 632 to 967) would have been exported by February 15, 2020 without any border or travel restrictions and that the travel lockdowns enforced by the Chinese government averted 70.5% (95% CI: 68.8 to 72.0%) of these cases. In addition, during the first three and a half weeks of implementation, the travel restrictions decreased the daily rate of exportation by 81.3% (95% CI: 80.5 to 82.1%), on average. At this early stage of the epidemic, reduction in the rate of exportation could delay the importation of cases into cities unaffected by the COVID-19 outbreak, buying time to coordinate an appropriate public health response.

The defining feature of the U.S. response to Covid-19 has been localized action against a global threat. Under our federalist system, what more can the federal government do to promote a unified response, particularly as regards community mitigation approaches?

Among school districts in the greater Boston area, the lifting of masking requirements was associated with an additional 44.9 Covid-19 cases per 1000 students and staff during the 15 weeks after a statewide masking policy was rescinded.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? The Editors note that although we came into this crisis with enormous advantages, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent.

This paper uses real-time transaction data from a large bank in Scandinavia to estimate the effect of social distancing laws on consumer spending in the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis exploits a natural experiment to disentangle the effects of the virus and the laws aiming to contain it: Denmark and Sweden were similarly exposed to the pandemic but only Denmark imposed significant restrictions on social and economic activities. We estimate that aggregate spending dropped by around 25% (95% CI: 24 to 26%) in Sweden and, as a result of the shutdown, by 4 additional percentage points (95% CI: 3 to 5 percentage points [p.p.]) in Denmark. This suggests that most of the economic contraction is caused by the virus itself and occurs regardless of social distancing laws. The age gradient in the estimates suggests that social distancing reinforces the virus-induced drop in spending for low-health-risk individuals but attenuates it for high-risk individuals by lowering the overall prevalence of the virus in the society.

There is emerging consensus that a graduated approach to Covid-19–related restrictive measures will be needed. Decisions to continue, modify, or lift restrictions — particularly bans on movement and gathering — could be tailored using individualized risk assessment.