Impact of Nonpharmacological Public Health Interventions on Epidemiological Parameters of COVID-19 Pandemic in India
Abstract Public health interventions are epidemiologically sound cost-effective methods to control the disease burden. Non-pharmacological Interventions are the only mode to control the disease in the absence of medications. To find the impact interventions on the epidemiological indicators of disease progression. This is a secondary data analysis done on COVID-19 data. Median Doubling Time and R0 were calculated for a rolling period of seven days. Interventions were scored from zero to three with the increasing level of stringency. Multivariate linear regression was performed to find the role of individual interventions on R0 and Median Doubling Time. The highest intervention score was reported in the lockdown phase which gradually decreased to lowest level of 22. R0 values settled to a level of 1.25 and the median doubling time increased to 20 days at the end of the study. Public awareness and public health laws were found to be related to both R0 and median doubling time in the Pre-lockdown phase only. Implementation of interventions at the ground level is one of the key factors of the success of PHI. Post implementation poor effectiveness of many interventions is evident from the study. Further studies related to the sequence of interventions is required to further analyse the poor effect of interventions.