Measuring the Efficiency of COVID-19 Policies in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The UK government has promulgated pandemic response policies since the beginning of COVID in the United Kingdom amid exponentially rising cases. Thus, this research assessed the efficiency of the UK government’s pandemic response policies. This paper argues that the government’s policies have not been as efficient as they could have been as the policies caused unemployment rates in the UK to rise immensely. We compared the number of COVID cases and the unemployment rates in the UK to the COVID policies by creating three graphs. We then compared all the graphs, and observed a pattern within two of the graphs, showing that higher stringency policies were insignificant to decreasing instantaneously the number of COVID cases. Using two of our graphs, it is clear that the UK government’s dilatory promulgation of its pandemic response policies failed to address the rising number of COVID cases in the country. Additionally, major COVID policies such as the first lockdown caused a massive increment in the unemployment rates. We conclude that the COVID policies lacked the impact and efficiency they were supposed to due to the government’s inability to announce the policy earlier.