Governments launch multiple policies to control spread of COVID-19 pandemic. Fewer studies exist on cost of COVID-19 related stringency measures on economic output, possibly due to low frequency of conventional economic data. This paper uses surface urban heat island as a proxy and tests the impact of COVID stringency in China taking advantage of its substantial spatial and time variations of control policies. We find stringency measures decrease urban heat island in locked cities while increasing it in unlocked ones. We rule out the contribution of human movement by showing lower mobility in both locked and unlocked cities.

JEL codes: D00