**1. Introduction**

COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus even more infectious than the virus responsible for the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. COVID-19 was classified by the World Health Organization as a pandemic on March 11, 2020 [1]. By August 5, 2021, 200 million confirmed cases and 4.26 million deaths had been reported worldwide. However, China had reported only 121,326 confirmed cases and 5651 deaths [2]. These figures are surprisingly low, given our limited understanding of the virus and the absence of effective drug treatments. At the time of writing, only 36,798 new cases of infection have been reported in China in the last year. Why are the numbers of infections and deaths in China so much lower than those in other countries? A research team from the University of Oxford shed light on this question by reporting a link between government response and the spread of COVID-19, with strong early intervention by the Chinese government playing a crucial role in limiting the spread of the disease [3]. Scholars have generally agreed that the Chinese government's early intervention was very effective [4–11]. However, the government relaxed its intervention efforts in May 2020, when the world considered China to be at the highest risk of experiencing a sustained COVID-19 epidemic, and there have since been no major COVID-19 spikes in China. Did the government's early intervention thus have a sustained impact on COVID-19 infection, limiting the later spread of the disease? If so, what was the mechanism of this impact? These questions have not been explored in previous studies, but answering them may help to curb the future spread of a pandemic such as COVID-19. In the current paper, we attempt to fill this research gap.

**Citation:** Duan, T.; Sun, Z.; Shi, G. Sustained Effects of Government Response on the COVID-19 Infection Rate in China: A Multiple Mediation Analysis. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 12422. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182312422

Academic Editors: Paolo Roma, Merylin Monaro and Cristina Mazza

Received: 17 October 2021 Accepted: 23 November 2021 Published: 25 November 2021

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