John Gibson: Lockdowns only slightly postponed deaths in New Zealand

The Level 4 lockdown imposed on March 25 2020 in New Zealand was the world’s most restrictive set of closure and containment policies at the time.

While designed to deal with Covid‐19, it was soon noted by public health academics that all‐cause mortality fell below historical rates about five weeks after the lockdown restrictions began. 

Deaths stayed below their week‐of‐the‐year averages for most of the next four months, avoiding the usual winter peak due especially to influenza.

This effect has been dubbed a “COVID‐19 response induced life gain” and some commentators argue that the tools used in 2020 against Covid could be used every year to deal with the winter peak in deaths due to influenza.

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Professor John Gibson of the School of Accounting, Finance and Economics at Waikato University was previously Chair of Economics at Canterbury University, and taught economics at Williams College in the US.