Lockdowns and face masks really did help to control covid-19
Non-vaccine measures such as social distancing and wearing face masks have been “unequivocally effective” at preventing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, according to a major report by the UK’s Royal Society
By Michael Le Page
24 August 2023
A UK government covid-19 campaign poster in London in January 2021
Dinendra Haria/ Getty Images
The main non-vaccine measures used to control the covid-19 pandemic – including lockdowns, face masks and test, trace and isolate – were effective at stemming the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, according to reviews of thousands of studies done around the world.
“They work,” says Mark Walport at the UK’s Royal Society, who chaired an expert working group behind a major report based on the reviews. The measures saved lives by preventing many people from being infected until after vaccines and drug treatments had been developed, he says.
The findings are important because there will be another pandemic at some point, he says. “There could be something that’s very much worse than SARS-CoV-2.”
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How well these measures worked varied depending on how and when they were implemented, but they were still “unequivocally effective”, particularly when used in combination and when levels of infection were low, the report says.
“[We] saw the importance of quick and decisive action,” says Salim Abdool Karim at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, one of the working group. “You can’t wait until you get perfect evidence. You’ve got to act and act decisively, and make these difficult decisions.”
The report acknowledges that these so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as lockdowns, can have serious social and economic consequences, but it didn’t look at these aspects. “The challenge for policy-makers is to balance the beneficial effects of NPIs in reducing transmission and infection against their adverse consequences,” says Walport.
