China’s Government Information Capacity, Medical Resource Allocation and COVID−19 Prevention and Control

Abstract The fight against the COVID−19 epidemic is a war against an “invisible enemy”. Access to accurate information and appropriate allocation of medical resources are key to containing the spread of the virus as soon as possible. The Chinese government has great power to collect information from individuals and basic-level organizations. It also has strong ability to pool and allocate medical resources. The fight against COVID−19 can be deemed as a quasi-natural experiment and based on this, we examine how government information capacity and medical resource allocation influence epidemic prevention and control in 286 Chinese cities (prefecture level and above). The findings are as follows: (1) Government information capacities improve the effectiveness of prevention and control policies. At city level, for every 0.1 point of increase in government information capacity score, the number of confirmed cases will reduce by 66.5, and the number of deaths per 10000 people will be down by 0.008. (2) The quantity of medical resources available has no direct influence on the effectiveness of epidemic prevention and control, but higher allocation efficiency does bring higher effectiveness. (3) The government can, on the one hand, allocate public resources based on information, and on the other hand guide the flow of social resources by releasing relevant information. Both can improve the allocation efficiency of medical resources. These findings have some policy implications for improving global emergency management.