Did coronavirus lockdowns work in the US? Millions escaped infection, one study finds
New research shows that stay-at-home orders, business closures and cancellations of large gatherings saved 60 million Americans from becoming infected with the novel coronavirus.
Together with five other countries experiencing substantial disease spread, shutdown policies prevented 530 million total infections, according to the research published Monday in the journal Nature.
The estimations come as authorities still question the invisible health benefits of such policies as economic and social hardships continue to devastate millions around the world.
“We find that anti-contagion policies have significantly and substantially slowed this growth,” the University of California, Berkeley researchers said in their study. “Some policies have different impacts on different populations, but we obtain consistent evidence that the policy packages now deployed are achieving large, beneficial, and measurable health outcomes.”
The team analyzed data from sources on 1,717 local, regional and national “non-pharmaceutical interventions” such as travel restrictions, social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns as well as school, religious and commercial closures in China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France and the U.S.
Infection growth rates were compared before and after policies were enforced.
The data included interventions implemented as early as February until April 6, according to the study, and was evaluated using “econometric methods, commonly used to measure the effect of policies on economic growth.”
In total, shutdown policies prevented an estimated 60 million infections in the U.S., and 4.8 million confirmed cases: a turnout that would’ve never been possible if the country took no action to curb coronavirus spread, according to researchers.
The number between infections and test-confirmed cases differs because most infected individuals do not get tested for the disease.
Without intervention policies, there would’ve been 38 million more total infections in South Korea, 49 million more in Italy, 54 million more in Iran, and 45 million more in France, and 285 million more infections in China.
Countries need to remain vigilant
Despite the good news, the researchers warn that the majority of populations in every country still remain vulnerable to infection, “and if the spread of the virus is left uninhibited by policy or behavioral change, exponential growth continues until the fraction of the susceptible population declines meaningfully.”
In other words, only until herd immunity — when enough people become infected with a disease that it stops spreading — is reached, or until a vaccine is developed, will countries be able to return to pre-coronavirus normalcy.
“This is just the beginning of the epidemic: we’re very far from herd immunity,” Samir Bhatt, senior author of a study from the Imperial College London that found shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, told The Washington Post.
“The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and precautions are abandoned is very real,” Bhatt said.
Also influencing the policies’ effectiveness is the timing of implementation, intensity, duration and the extent, meaning how many “localities deployed policies,” the Berkeley study said.
“Our analysis of existing policies indicates that seemingly small delays in policy deployment likely produced dramatically different health outcomes,” the researchers said.
The team said it’s ”not surprising that some populations have hesitated before implementing such dramatic policies, especially when their costs are visible while their health benefits — infections and deaths that would have occurred but instead were avoided or delayed — are unseen.”
Some countries, however, do not provide specific data on coronavirus policies to the public, which “pose challenges to our analysis,” the researchers said.
The team said they hope their findings can inform preventative decision-making in other countries dealing with the disease.
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 6:22 PM with the headline "Did coronavirus lockdowns work in the US? Millions escaped infection, one study finds."
