How Many Lives Has Lockdown Saved in the UK?

  1. Rickard Nyman
  2. Paul Ormerod

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Abstract

We compare the trajectory of deaths (both in hospitals and care homes) on a daily basis in Sweden and England and Wales (which constitute 90 per cent of the UK population) from 11 March to 7 August 2020, the latest date at which the relevant data is available for England and Wales.

Deaths in both Sweden and England and Wales peaked on 8 April. The build up to the peak was very similar in both. Given the time lag between infection and death, the lockdown would have had little effect on the peak number of deaths.

By the first week of August, the deaths are very similar in both. However, from early May the decline in England and Wales has been much sharper.

We estimate that to 7 August, lockdown saved 17,700 lives in England and Wales, or just under 20,000 extrapolating to a UK level.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139196: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139196v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139196v1 on medRxiv