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European coronavirus lockdowns saved millions of lives

09/06/2020

European coronavirus lockdowns saved millions of lives

While the COVID-19 lockdowns across Europe have not been easy for most people, new research shows that they have been effective in saving countless lives.


According to the study by a team at Imperial College, London, Europe-wide lockdowns to reduce the impact of SARS-CoV-2 have saved more than three million lives. The team said that if lockdown had not been implemented across the continent, the “death toll would have been huge”.


However, the team also warned that Europe is still only at the beginning of the pandemic and that scores more people could be infected.


Assessing the impact of lockdowns up to the beginning of May in 11 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. By that time, approximately 130,000 people had died from COVID-19 in those countries.


Using disease modelling, the researchers predicted how many deaths there would have been if no lockdowns and restrictions had been enforced. They estimated 3.2 million people would have died by 4 May, the report in the journal Nature shows. In other words, lockdown measures prevented around 3.1 million lives, including 470,000 in the UK, 630,000 in Italy and 690,000 in France.


"Lockdown averted millions of deaths, those deaths would have been a tragedy," said Dr. Seth Flaxman, from Imperial College.


[Related reading: Which demographic worries least about COVID-19?]

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