An international team of researchers who reviewed evidence obtained from across the globe stated that lockdowns imposed during the pandemic are tied to harms to health; however, the level of impact doesn’t seem to be worse than the health effects of COVID-19.

Researchers assessed the impact of lockdowns on mortality rates, use of routine health services, global health programs, suicide, and mental health to ascertain if government restrictions or the COVID-19 infection are responsible for harms to health. Data from the World Mortality Dataset, the largest international databank for all-cause mortality, was used for the review. The dataset has data updated up to mid-2021 from 94 countries that have either imposed COVID-19 restrictions or not.

Researchers noted that there were no locations where a lockdown without large numbers of COVID-19 cases was linked with large numbers of excess deaths, which indicates that the interventions on their own cannot be worse than large COVID-19 outbreaks. Locations with lesser restrictions, on the other hand, appeared to have had huge numbers of excess deaths. The findings are published online in BMJ Global Health… (Medscape)