Work

Observational Study of the Effect of the Juvenile Stay-At-Home Order on SARS-CoV-2 Infection Spread in Saline County, Arkansas

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: We assess the treatment effect of juvenile stay-at-home orders (JSAHO) on reducing the rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection spread in Saline County (“Saline”), Arkansas, by examining the difference between Saline’s and control Arkansas counties’ changes in daily and mean log infection rates of pretreatment (March 28–April 5, 2020) and treatment periods (April 6–May 6, 2020). A synthetic control county is constructed based on the parallel-trends assumption, least-squares fitting on pretreatment and socio-demographic covariates, and elastic-net-based methods, from which the counterfactual outcome is predicted and the treatment effect is estimated using the difference-in-differences, the synthetic control, and the changes-in-changes methodologies. Both the daily and average treatment effects of JSAHO are shown to be significant. Despite its narrow scope and lack of enforcement for compliance, JSAHO reduced the rate of the infection spread in Saline. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Source: Statistics and Public Policy

DOI: 10.1080/2330443x.2022.2050326

Authors: Neil Hwang, Shirshendu Chatterjee, Yanming Di, Sharmodeep Bhattacharyya

Institutions: City University of New York, Bronx Community College, City College of New York, Oregon State University

Language: English

Topic: COVID-19 epidemiological studies

Subfield: Modeling and Simulation

Field: Mathematics

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,134