IN EARLY November, covid-19 cases in Europe were surging, accounting for almost half the world’s new cases and deaths. Now many in the region are emerging from a second round of lockdowns, including England on 2 December and soon France on 15 December. So how well did they work, and which countries got them right?
The restrictions imposed by most European nations were “fairly high”, says Thomas Hale at the University of Oxford, who runs a . Last week, most European nations scored more than 60 out of 100 points on the tracker’s index of the stringency of responses, with most having “stay at home” orders. Exceptions included the Baltic states, countries in the Balkans and Switzerland.
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Hannah Ritchie at online publisher Our World in Data, says that most national lockdowns have already caused new cases to reach their peak.
Typically, new cases in European countries peaked one to two weeks after a lockdown started, and deaths a further one to two weeks later, says Ritchie. But some say it should take two to three weeks for an effect to be seen, .
England’s national lockdown, which began on 5 November, appears to have cut the virus’s prevalence by about 30 per cent, according to the being run by Imperial College London. Around 1 in 100 people were estimated to be infected, according to results from 13 to 24 November, compared with about 1 in 80 between 16 October and 2 November.
On 27 November, the UK government’s science advisers revised down the coronavirus’s reproduction, or R, number for England to between 0.9 and 1 – the first time since September that it may have been below 1 – indicating that the country’s epidemic is stable or shrinking.
“We know lockdowns work, but national-scale lockdowns are a blunt instrument. Countries that have fared better have largely managed to avoid them,” says Ritchie, citing Finland as a success story. The World Health Organization says lockdowns should be a last resort.
“Many of us in this field are frustrated that Europe is back in this situation,” says Amesh Adalja at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He says the sustainable alternative is effective test-and-trace systems.
“2 weeks
The amount of time before lockdown compliance falls”
In their absence, second lockdowns in Europe have curbed the virus’s spread. “We can say that now, at the end of autumn, the situation is quite under control. The challenge is how much have we improved our preparedness, readiness and contingency plans to face the coming months in a safer way,” says Josep Jansa at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
One issue is that most countries allowed new cases to get too high before locking down, says Jansa. Austria, where a national lockdown didn’t start until 17 November, is a case of waiting too long, says Hale. At the opposite end was Denmark, he says, which acted quickly with lockdowns in some areas from 6 November.
Cases in France were relatively slow to peak after lockdown, which Ritchie thinks is probably due to covid-19’s high prevalence in communities before the measure.
Conversely, Wales’s use of a two-week “firebreak” lockdown, 13 days ahead of England’s, caused cases to peak in about eight days, says Rob Orford, the country’s chief scientific adviser for health. “The models suggested we would take R below 1, and we could potentially push the epidemic back at least three weeks. And that’s exactly what happened,” he says.
The UK government’s science advisers recommended a similar strategy on 21 September for England, which wasn’t adopted. “If the government had listened to SAGE back in September, we probably could have got away with a few weeks,” says Stephen Griffin at the University of Leeds, UK.
Curfew or closure?
Shorter lockdowns can help avoid public fatigue. Based on surveys and mobility data due out this week, Hale has found that compliance falls two weeks into European national lockdowns – and sharply after eight weeks.
The severity of restrictions also varied between countries. One big factor in their effectiveness appears to be whether bars and restaurants were shut or made to close early. “It looks as if places that just close early, that’s not particularly effective. Closing restaurants and bars does seem to slow things down,” says Christina Pagel at University College London. “Netherlands and France both tried curfews, but then moved to closure of hospitality, which flattened the curve.”
Sweden, which took a different response to most European countries in the first wave, has again held back from a national lockdown, but has imposed tougher restrictions than before, including a national ban on alcohol sales after 10 pm. “Sweden is much more constrained this time. The so-called Swedish exception has been less of an exception,” says Hale.
Germany has been hit harder second time round, but its strict lockdown has kept cases at a much lower level than its neighbours, says Ritchie.
Most experts Â鶹´«Ă˝ spoke to think a third cycle of lockdowns is probable in Europe, given people mixing at Christmas. “I wouldn’t say it’s inevitable,” says Hale. “But I think that it’s more likely than not.”
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