The lockdown effect

While lockdowns and distancing protocols have had economic and social implications, they have helped prevent millions of potential infections

The Covid-19 coronavirus that broke out in China last year and has since spread across the world, has set in motion a series of sudden and dramatic measures as countries try to adapt to the ‘new normal’. Governments scrambled to enact policies to safeguard public health and safety. In the absence of a vaccine – months away, in a best-case scenario – non-pharmaceutical interventions were potential saviours in curtailing the transmission of the contagion.

Of such interventions, lockdowns of varied degrees – depending on the severity and extent of the spread of the contagion – were deployed across countries, a seemingly obvious choice for societies to break the chain of transmission and protect the most vulnerable segments.

While lockdowns may have crippled businesses, triggered exoduses and caused potential mental health implications, their role in curtailing the transmission of the virus is without modern parallel.

According to research from a University of California, Berkeley team published in the journal Nature, policy deployments such as travel restrictions, business and school closures and other interventions helped avoid approximately 530 million total Covid-19 infections across six countries – China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the US from January to April 6, 2020. Of these infections, 62 million would likely have been “confirmed cases.”

Currently, global cases have crossed 10 million, with 500,000 having succumbed to the virus (at time of going to press). But the UC Berkeley research suggests that the toll would have been far greater without policy interventions.

In China alone, anti-contagion policies helped prevent roughly 37 million more confirmed cases, while South Korea, Italy and Iran averted an estimated 11.5 million, 2.1 million and 5 million additional confirmed cases, respectively. Meanwhile, in the US and France, an estimated 4.8 million and 1.4 million confirmed cases were prevented.

WHAT’S NEXT

As lockdowns and travel restrictions are gradually lifted across parts of the world, pockets of outbreaks signalling a potential second wave could cause a recrudescence in the number of Covid19 cases, threatening a nascent economic recovery.

In mid-June, China reported its largest daily case increase in two months with Beijing shuttering down its largest fruit and vegetable supply centre and nearby housing districts. Also, in midJune, Iran recorded its highest daily count of fatalities in nine weeks.

If similar outbreaks in other countries lead to a resurgence of the Covid-19 virus, it may again prompt governments to reinforce lockdowns and distancing protocols to battle the contagion until a cure finally emerges.