News Room

Lockdowns implemented in some countries to reduce transmission of the coronavirus were extremely effective at controlling its rapid spread and saved millions of lives, two new studies suggest. Shutdowns prevented or delayed an estimated 531 million coronavirus infections across six countries — China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France and the United States — researchers from the University of California, Berkeley report June 8 in Nature.

The great challenge of something such as COVID-19 is that we don’t have the time to do decades of research to understand the effectiveness — or lack of effectiveness — of any given approach. We have to act. That means, though, that we could be “successful” at handling COVID-19 yet still fail society due to unmeasured impacts.

Christopher Tang, professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, describes what it will take for hospital and healthcare supply chains to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 was a “wakeup call” for supply chains, Tang says. A nation that ostensibly has an abundance of materials discovered that it could be subject to serious shortages of critical supplies needed to fight a pandemic, such as personal protective equipment and ventilators. “We need to rethink how we can do better,” he says.

When the hardest hit area of the state confronted the worst of the pandemic, its biggest hospital got into the daycare business. Doctors, nurses and other front line workers at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany were marooned at home because the shutdown of schools and day cares left no one to care for their children. The hospital responded by assigning employees to convert a health center into a kids camp. Administrative workers became camp counselors.

Lockdowns implemented in some countries to reduce transmission of the coronavirus were extremely effective at controlling its rapid spread and saved millions of lives, two new studies suggest. Shutdowns prevented or delayed an estimated 531 million coronavirus infections across six countries — China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France and the United States — researchers from the University of California, Berkeley report June 8 in Nature.