[Association of public health and social measures with the effectiveness of COVID-19 epidemic control].

OBJECTIVES: Public health and social measures are essential tools for countries to control epidemic transmission but may also disrupt normal socioeconomic activities. This study aims to analyze differences in public health and social measures policy stringency, temporal trends, and their association with corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) control outcomes in 118 countries from January 2020 to September 2022, providing evidence to support the formulation of scientifically grounded public health and social measures policies. METHODS: Boxplots were used to describe the distribution of overall and individual public health and social measures policy stringency scores across 118 countries during the pandemic. Linear and nonlinear models were fitted to examine temporal trends in public health and social measures policy stringency. A two-way fixed-effects model was applied to analyze the association between public health and social measures policy stringency and the effective reproduction number of COVID-19. RESULTS: