How effective has the Spanish lockdown been to battle COVID-19? A spatial analysis of the coronavirus propagation across provinces

This paper examines the propagation of COVID-19 across the Spanish provinces and assesses the effectiveness of the Spanish lockdown of the population implemented on March 14, 2020 in order to battle this pandemic. To achieve these objectives, a standard spatial econometric model used in economics is adapted to resemble the popular reproduction models employed in the epidemiological literature. In addition, we introduce a counterfactual exercise that allows us to examine the Gross domestic product (GDP) gains of bringing forward the date of the Spanish Lockdown. We find that the number of COVID-19 cases would have been reduced by 70.4% in the absence of spatial propagation between the Spanish provinces. We also determine that the lockdown prevented the propagation of the virus within and between provinces. As such, the Spanish lockdown reduced the number of potential COVID-19 cases by 82.8%. However, the number of coronavirus cases would have been reduced by an additional 11.6% if the lockdown had been brought forward to March 7, 2020. Finally, an earlier lockdown would have saved approximately 26,900,000,000 euros.