Assessing the Impact of Non‐Pharmaceutical Interventions on COVID‐19 in India: A Combined CCE and Quantile Regression Approach

ABSTRACT This paper presents supposedly the first empirical evidence on the impact of non‐pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on deaths and infections due to COVID‐19 in India. I use the Oxford COVID‐19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) database of daily government responses of stringency, containment, economic support, and overall government response from Jan 28, 2020, till December 31, 2022. I use CS‐ARDL to quantify the short‐ and long‐term associations and quantile regression to uncover the impact of NPIs across heterogeneous quantiles. The overall government support, which aggregates all three NPIs, demonstrates a significant adverse effect on fatalities. In the long‐term, a 10% increase in it reduces deaths by 1.94% and infections by 10.67%. Stringency and containment interventions are equally found to be effective. Economic support is significantly associated with a reduction in death rates—by 1.89% in the short term and 1.07% in the long term—and a 10.28% reduction in infection rates over the long term. In the short term, NPIs are not notably effective in reducing infections; however, their effectiveness improves over the long term. Quantile regression reveals a heterogeneous impact of NPIs on COVID‐19 outcomes across the distribution. NPIs show limited effectiveness at lower quantiles, but their impact becomes increasingly significant at higher quantiles, particularly for infections, where the effect size is notably larger. Results suggest bi‐directional causality, as higher cases lead to stricter interventions, subsequently lowering incidence rates. I establish that effective pandemic management requires a phased approach to NPIs, with region‐specific flexibility and timely economic support to enhance short‐ and long‐term outcomes. Evidence from India shows that NPIs are indispensable, especially when pharmaceutical options are limited, as they effectively control mortality and support public health resilience.