COVID-19 SCIENCE
Australia is the only country that started lockdown after reaching its peak with cases
By Dr Juergen Ude | February 13th 2021
Australia was the only country that started lockdown after its first peak had reached. Cases were on the way down as shown in Figure 1.
If anything, lockdown slowed down the rate of decrease in cases.
Figure 1: Australia implementing lock down after the peak had already been reached.
Other countries started at the beginning of the infection rise such as Italy, France, and Spain. Figure 2 shows examples. Please note a slowdown kink like Australia’s.
Figure 2a: Infection polygons for Italy.
Figure 2b: Infection polygons for Spain.
The first side of the rectangle is when some minor mitigation efforts were put in place and the second full lockdown.
It takes at least 7 days for a mitigation effect to be noticed. Figure 2 shows where the effect of lockdown should have been visible,
Figure 3: Expected time of effect.
Australia's lockdown strategy meant that an effect would have occurred at the bottom after the peak instead of before.