As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, world leaders pursued different strategies for containing the virus, often with differing results.
Some countries, such as New Zealand, virtually sealed their borders and implemented monthslong lockdowns to try to stop the spread of the virus.
Others, such as Sweden, chose not to restrict their citizens’ movement or opted to impose very few mandates after the start of the pandemic in 2020.
And while New Zealand at first attempted to eliminate COVID-19 entirely with strict lockdowns and aggressive contact tracing, the virus is now sweeping through the island nation thanks to the end of its restrictions amid public pressure and changing attitudes globally toward the virus.
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Research has provided mixed answers to the question of whether lockdowns in general stopped the spread of the coronavirus.
A Johns Hopkins University analysis looked at 24 studies involving different levels of lockdowns and travel bans across multiple countries and found that “lockdowns have had little to no public health effects.”
The analysis of lockdown policies also described the “enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.”
Yogesh Joshi, a professor at the University of Maryland, found in research that looked at lockdowns in 93 countries that stay-at-home orders did indeed keep people at home — but not always for the entire duration of the lockdown. After a few weeks, people in the countries where lockdowns stretched on longer tended to leave their homes more and more.
Joshi attributed that to “lockdown fatigue.”
“I would say that we tend to think of lockdowns as this policy action which will cause things to slow down and stay that way. So regarding mobility, one expects that when a lockdown is imposed, mobility will go down and stay that way till the lockdown is removed,” Joshi told the Washington Examiner. “What we find is that while mobility goes down when a lockdown is imposed, it does not continue to stay that way all the time under a lockdown, especially for long lockdowns.”
For cultural reasons, some countries with more homogeneous societies benefited, from a public health standpoint, from greater levels of compliance with COVID-19 rules than others.
And not all countries resorted to lockdowns to stop the virus. Some chose expansive contact-tracing operations or testing regimes instead of restrictions on movements.
Here is how some of the different COVID-19 approaches affected the spread of the virus.
SWEDEN
Sweden’s approach to the pandemic has proven controversial because its leaders refused to impose the kinds of lockdowns that its neighbors pursued in the early months of the pandemic.
Sweden had relaxed COVID-19 policies relative to its Nordic neighbors and the rest of Europe. The country never closed public spaces such as restaurants and schools, nor did it require face masks. By July of last year, its public health agency had dropped its recommendation that people voluntarily wear masks on public transportation.
Critics have said Sweden’s approach resulted in failure because its Nordic neighbors experienced fewer deaths from COVID-19.
Finland, for example, has logged roughly 2,800 COVID-19 deaths, Denmark roughly 5,400, and Norway nearly 2,200.
Sweden has recorded roughly 18,000 COVID-19 deaths. Its population is nearly double that of Norway, Finland, and Denmark, so a larger number of deaths was expected, but some have pointed to the higher number as proof that Sweden’s approach was a failure.
By another metric known as excess deaths, however, Swedish health officials appear more successful. Excess death figures capture deaths, from all causes, not just the coronavirus, that occurred above the expected baseline during the pandemic.
Experts use the figures to weigh the total impact of public health policy, such as whether patients delayed seeking care for other kinds of illnesses during the pandemic due to restrictions.
After 2020, excess mortality data showed Sweden had significantly fewer deaths above its expected baseline than European countries that had pursued lockdowns and more aggressive mitigation strategies, such as Spain and Belgium.
NEW ZEALAND
Among the most restrictive of countries when it came to pandemic policies, New Zealand’s leaders closed its borders to nearly all visitors in 2020 and imposed strict lockdowns across the country.
Auckland, its largest city, was thrust back into a 107-day lockdown last year after health officials detected a single case of the virus.
New Zealand officials at first pursued a zero COVID strategy aimed at curbing the spread of the virus entirely. It at first appeared to keep cases extremely low, and for several months in summer 2020, New Zealand recorded no deaths from COVID-19.
By the fall of last year, however, New Zealand’s leaders had acknowledged the strategy of attempting to eliminate the virus entirely was no longer viable.
After easing its heavy restrictions far later than almost any other country, New Zealand began to experience a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases heading into this year. It is averaging tens of thousands of new COVID-19 cases and has recorded most of its 192 total deaths from the virus just since February.
UNITED KINGDOM
British leaders have been criticized for their seemingly uneven approach to mitigating the virus since it began to spread in early 2020.
The country’s decision to delay lockdown weeks later than other countries in March 2020 has been widely criticized and blamed for causing unnecessary deaths at the start of the pandemic.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a national lockdown that began in late March 2020 and ended in May of that year. In October 2020, after casting off many of the COVID-19 restrictions and sending children back to school, British leaders locked down the country once again.
The U.K. imposed more restrictions heading into 2021 that were dropped by the summer of that year, including crowd size limits.
The U.K. has this year dropped nearly all COVID-19 rules in an effort to live with the virus, but its past strategy of quickly imposing and then totally removing restrictions in fits and starts throughout the pandemic has proven controversial.
More than 186,000 people in the U.K. have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, placing it near the middle of the pack in terms of European countries’ coronavirus death rates per million residents.
Countries that more consistently applied lockdowns and border restrictions, such as Iceland, fared far better. Iceland recorded less than a tenth of the deaths per million residents as the U.K.
SOUTH KOREA
The strategies pursued by South Korean leaders have been held up as models of success in managing COVID-19.
South Korea was among the most aggressive in putting a widespread COVID-19 testing policy in place, and its health officials quickly developed a contact-tracing operation to attempt to contain cases.
While restrictions on business, including curfews, were at different points put in place, South Korea never resorted to nationwide lockdowns.
The omicron wave provided a stiff challenge to South Korea’s approach, however.
The number of COVID-19 deaths has exploded since fall 2021, and confirmed cases have exploded as well — from just over 457,000 on Dec. 1 to nearly 10 million as of this week.
Grappling with the surge, South Korean health officials focused their resources on the sickest patients and encouraged healthier South Koreans to treat themselves at home — abandoning its previous practice of providing food and supplies to every COVID-19-positive South Korean.
ICELAND
Iceland’s approach has shifted dramatically in recent months from expansive testing and strict isolation policies to an explicit effort to achieve herd immunity by infecting as many Icelanders as possible.
Tourists and Icelanders returning from abroad had to, until recently, show a negative COVID-19 test, isolate for five days, and provide a second negative test to enter the country, which had kept cases relatively low until this year.
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With those restrictions now gone, Iceland’s top epidemiologist has said in recent weeks that herd immunity is the most likely path out of the pandemic for the island country.
Iceland’s leaders have attributed their success in mitigating the virus to the high levels of compliance with masking and isolation rules among citizens — a feat that has been more difficult for public health officials in larger countries, including the United States, to achieve.
