Short-term mortality | Lockdowns themselves caused an increase in short-term excess mortality (defined as mortality greater than the anticipated modelled number of deaths given existing trends) | Countries that imposed several strict lockdowns without experiencing large COVID-19 epidemics (eg, Australia, New Zealand) did not have large numbers of excess deaths. This provides strong evidence that lockdowns themselves are not sufficient to cause surges in deaths |
Disruption to health services | Lockdowns are directly responsible for reduced access to and use of healthcare services, which in turn causes harms to health in the long term | The association between large outbreaks of COVID-19, government interventions and reduced use of non-COVID health services is well established. However, this association may be due to healthcare services being redirected to handle COVID-19 cases or other impacts of the pandemic itself rather than by lockdowns. In addition, there is evidence that people fear becoming infected by SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare settings and thus stay home rather than attend health services |
Suicide and mental health | Lockdowns have driven increases in the suicide rate | There is consistent and robust evidence from many countries that government interventions to control COVID-19 have not been associated with increased deaths from suicide |
Global health programmes | Lockdowns have disrupted services for HIV, TB, malaria and vaccination programmes | Such service disruptions are well documented, but the evidence shows that these have been caused by multiple complex direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19, not just stay-at-home orders |