Coronavirus shutdowns ‘prevented 60MILLION COVID-19 cases in the US’ and ‘had large health benefits’
A NEW study found that coronavirus lockdowns across the US prevented 60million new infections and that stay-at-home restrictions had "large health benefits."
A team at the University of California, Berkeley on Monday in the scientific journal Nature.
If shutdowns were not enacted in states throughout the country after the hit the US, there could be roughly 60million more cases of the virus.
The study measures the effect of coronavirus policies in , , , , , and the .
Researchers determined that if restrictions weren't enacted from early January through early April, other countries would have been hit harder too, with 285million more total infections in China and 38million more in South Korea.
Italy could have seen 49million more, Iran with 54million, and 45million more in France.
Throughout the world, more than seven million coronavirus cases have been reported.
The US reported more than two million of those cases, with more than 112,000 deaths.
The world first learned of COVID-19 in January after its outbreak in Wuhan, China.
The World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new virus, and thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately."
But The Associated Press reported last week that China delayed sending the WHO the information they needed to fight the spread of the virus.
China reportedly withheld the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information.
Government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on January 11.
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But even then, China stalled for at least two more weeks on providing the WHO with detailed data on patients and cases, according to recordings of internal meetings held by health agency through January.
This all happened at a time when the outbreak might have been dramatically slowed.
Since the outbreak, most lockdowns have since been lifted across the US — and New York City, the epicenter of the country's outbreak, began its phase one reopening on Monday.