Lockdowns prevented around 3.1 million deaths in 11 European countries, according to a new modelling study published Monday by the Imperial College London.
"Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions, and lockdown in particular, have had a large effect on reducing transmission," the authors said in the study, published in Nature Research.The researchers estimated that cumulatively between 12 and 15 million people had been infected in the period -- or between 3.2 and 4 percent of the population of the 11 nations.
That compares with Belgium, with the highest infection rate of the countries at 8 percent, and Spain, where some 5.5 percent of the population, or 2.6 million people, were estimated to have been infected. The authors said that since interventions such as restrictions on public events and school closures were imposed in quick succession, it is difficult to tease out the effect of each one separately.
The 11 nations were: Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. In a separate study, also published in Nature, researchers from UC Berkeley used a different method -- econometric modelling used to assess how policies affect economic growth -- to evaluate containment policies in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States.
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