Public announcements and mask use during COVID-19 bridging regression and machine learning

Abstract The effectiveness of public health policies has a major impact on society. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, policy-makers worldwide introduced various public health measures, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, to address the severe threat posed by the disease. Despite the importance of these issues, there has been no direct, visual evidence that mask-related policies led to the appropriate mask-wearing behaviour of the general public. Here, we show that regulations and public