Lockdown restrictions prevented an estimated an additional 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S. alone, according to a study by the scientific journal "Nature."
The article studied COVID-19 data in the U.S., China, South Korea, Italy, Iran and France. It determined that there would have been more than 500 million cases of the virus in those six countries alone without lockdown measures in place through early April.
Authors said they could not think of any human endeavor that has saved so many lives in such a short period of time. Researchers did not speculate how many people would have died without lockdown restrictions.
As of Tuesday, more than 7 million people worldwide had contracted the virus and more than 400,000 people had died. The U.S. continues to lead the world in both total infections (1.9 million) and deaths linked to the virus (111,000).
The study comes weeks after researchers at Columbia determined that more than 36,000 lives could have been saved in the United States had officials enacted widespread lockdown restrictions just one week earlier.
