What the localized lockdown policy tells: “It does not work and seem too late

Vietnam used to be lauded as the coronavirus fighting model since the pandemic began. Vietnam kept the virus at bay by imposing strictly localized lockdowns to deal with the emergence of a deadly new variant might. Using daily data for 63 provinces over the period from January 2021 to July 2021 with 13,230 observations and employing an event-study design and difference-in-difference, this paper identifies the ineffectiveness of the localized lockdown policy. Although there is a drop in public areas visits after the lockdown event, infected cases still increased. These results have implications for the lateness of localized lockdown and the challenge of the partial stringency of social distancing.