Chart of the Week: Lockdown measures sustained to prevent second waves

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The Oxford University and Blavatnik School of Government’s stringency index measures the “strictness of ‘lockdown style’ policies that primarily restrict people’s behaviour” worldwide. It is made up of a variety of components such as school and workplace closings, restrictions on public events and gatherings and rules on transport into and around the country. The index is a good measure to compare a government’s relative effort to slow the spread of the virus.

The index shows that New Zealand imposed some of the strictest lockdown measures in the early months of the outbreak and this was initially successful. The result was the ability to lower restrictions and get people’s lives and the economy close to, pre-COVID, normal. However, recent regional outbreaks have led to the re-imposition of measures and advocates of the herd immunity approach argue that the country is only delaying the inevitable and at a cost to the economy.

Other countries have also decided to stick with stricter measures for the time being. As new cases worldwide have begun to fall, most countries have maintained their lockdown measures in order to minimise the risk of new outbreaks that others have experienced. In Germany, for example, the early reduction in daily new cases led to the relaxing of lockdown measures in May, shown by its falling stringency index, but by June new cases were on the rise again. As daily new cases in the country continue to rise, lockdown measures have yet to be tightened again.

Although the index confirms that life has not returned to normal in most major economies, and many restrictions remain, we nevertheless continue to expect a strong recovery in global economic activity through the second half of this year.

There are also limitations to the insight these indices can give us. Whilst a good measure of the policies a government imposes, the index does not measure the strictness with which these policies are enforced. In Brazil and the US, contradictions between policymakers have, amongst other factors, led to many citizens flouting lockdown rules, significantly reducing the effectiveness of efforts to slow the virus. Hence, although their stringency indices implied lockdown measures have been stricter since mid-April, new cases on Monday in the US and Brazil were over 140 per million whereas in South Korea they were just over 5.

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