Britain stands out for its tough lockdown, but other countries are juggling the same pressures

In New York City, only outdoor dining is permitted, but restaurants remain open

Credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

How lockdown measures compared across the globe

Four weeks into our third lockdown, the British public could be forgiven for looking longingly at New Zealand, where life goes on almost as normal and face masks restricted only to air travel and Auckland’s public transport network.

Blessed by its geographical isolation and relative lack of international travellers, the island nation has been able effectively to shut itself off from the pandemic and, after an early lockdown last year, declare itself Covid-free.  

It’s not all been plain sailing, however. The price of Covid liberty is eternal vigilance – and a willingness to enact harsh restrictions at the smallest trigger. On August 12, Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, was placed in a Level 3 lockdown for 18 days, with public venues closed and household mixing limited to bubbles, after just four cases of unknown origin. Social distancing remained in place until October 7.

If New Zealand provides the perfect case study of how to target “zero Covid”, other places that suffered heavily during 2020 are now enjoying relative freedom.

Residents of Buenos Aires have been able to go to bars and restaurants and mix in size- limited groups since November, having spent eight months enduring the world’s longest lockdown. Infections are decreasing, although it is the height of the Argentine summer.

And in New York, whose overwhelmed hospitals were emblematic of the United States’ flailing response to the pandemic, citizens are able to shop and dine in much of the city, albeit with a 10pm curfew and restaurants restricted to outdoor service. Reopening schools, however, has proved more complicated, with middle and high schools closed since November. Infections, though, continue to trend down.

In Europe, the picture is less rosy. Both Spain and Italy are operating a patchwork of regional restrictions and only a national curfew, with the latter even easing the rules slightly last week in spite of warnings from scientists. Spain, meanwhile, suffered in January its worst month for infections and hospital admissions since the first wave, but the Government has so far refused to tighten restrictions

France is Europe’s other major lockdown holdout. Like Britain, it entered a brief national shutdown in the autumn, but since lifting it, President Emmanuel Macron has resisted calls to reimpose harsh restrictions. Instead, in the face of stubbornly high infections and deaths, he has responded with an ever-tightening curfew that now covers all of France and lasts from 6pm to 6am.

In Germany, on the other hand, Angela Merkel started softly, with only a partial lockdown in November, but has since had to ratchet up restrictions, closing schools in December and tightly limiting household mixing last month.

Indeed, across much of the world, government’s are operating on a precarious set of scales, where political pressure is weighed against epidemiological reality. For most, lockdown remains a painful tool of last resort, but until vaccination is widespread, it looms over their decision making.