Time：April 3, 21:00-22:00

Tencent：761-193-760

Speaker：Wang，Xiaoqian, PhD candidate, School of Economics, Peking University, Email: xqwang97@pku.edu.cn

Topic：COVID-19 Outbreak, Healthcare Accessibility, and Government Response

Abstract：The onset and unprecedented scope of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have raised great concern about global health. Many policies are implemented to contain the pandemic and deliver medical services to infected people. However, healthcare accessibility for the non-COVID-19-infected population may have been negatively affected.  Exploiting the difference-in-differences methods and event study methods, this paper uses administrative data on public requests in China to empirically examines the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on healthcare accessibility and the government response. The results show that during the two outbreaks, the daily number of requests for health care access increased significantly relative to the earlier days compared with the same period one year ago. The government response time decreased significantly during the two outbreaks, suggesting that the government has actively coped with public requests.