The trade-off between economic development and pandemic control: strategy identification and effect analysis

The pandemic has substantially impacted global development. Countries worldwide have weighed economic development and pandemic control and gradually formed two entirely different governance strategies: the elimination strategy with the goal of zero new cases and the suppression strategy with the goal of ‘smoothing the pandemic curve’. Amid the popularity of vaccinations and mutation of the virus, how do countries implement changes in governance strategies? How effective is the response to the pandemic? This study constructed an indicator, based on economic and pandemic data from 34 countries, to identify each country’s strategy choice. The modified Slack-based Measure model and two-way fixed-effect model were used to assess pandemic governance efficiency and analyse the impact of the elimination strategy, respectively. The results show that most countries that adopted the elimination strategy earlier have changed to select the suppression strategy. Nevertheless, the elimination strategy has a significant positive effect on improving governance efficiency, especially under conditions of low vaccination, scarce medical resources, and export-oriented and non-democratic countries. However, this effect gradually weakens with viral mutation. The results also showed that the elimination strategy was more conducive to civil liberties in the earlier period. Therefore, in addition to popularising vaccinations, local conditions should be considered when selecting a strategy.