Juarez Ruben, Siegal Nicole, Maunakea Alika K
Economics and UHERO, University of Hawaii-Mānoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA.
Vaccines (Basel). 2022 May 13;10(5):773. doi: 10.3390/vaccines10050773.
Having been affected by the highest increase in COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, Honolulu and Maui counties in Hawaii implemented vaccine passport mandates for select industries in September 2021. However, the degree to which such mandates impacted COVID-19 mitigation efforts and economics remains poorly understood. Herein, we describe the effects of these mandates on changes in three areas using difference-in-difference regression models: (1) business foot traffic; (2) number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 individuals, and (3) COVID-19 vaccination rates across counties affected or unaffected by the mandates. We observed that although businesses affected by mandates experienced a 6.7% decrease in foot traffic over the 14 weeks after the mandates were implemented, the number of COVID-19 cases decreased by 19.0%. Notably, the vaccination rate increased by 1.41% in counties that implemented mandates. In addition, towards the end of the studied period, the level of foot traffic at impacted businesses converged towards the level of that of non-impacted businesses. As such, the trade-off in temporary losses at businesses was met with significant gains in public health and safety.
自疫情开始以来，夏威夷的檀香山县和毛伊县受新冠病毒病例增幅最高的影响，于2021年9月对特定行业实施了疫苗护照强制规定。然而，此类强制规定对新冠病毒缓解措施和经济的影响程度仍知之甚少。在此，我们使用差分回归模型描述了这些强制规定对三个方面变化的影响：（1）商业客流量；（2）每10万人中的新冠病毒病例数，以及（3）受强制规定影响或未受影响的各县的新冠病毒疫苗接种率。我们观察到，尽管受强制规定影响的企业在规定实施后的14周内客流量下降了6.7%，但新冠病毒病例数下降了19.0%。值得注意的是，实施强制规定的县的疫苗接种率提高了1.41%。此外，在研究期接近尾声时，受影响企业的客流量水平趋近于未受影响企业的客流量水平。因此，企业的暂时损失换来的是公共卫生和安全方面的显著收益。
