Is the lockdown important to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic? Effects on psychology, environment and economy-perspective

Abstract

COVID-19's daily increasing cases and deaths have led to worldwide lockdown, quarantine and some restrictions. This study aims to analyze the effect of lockdown days on the spread of coronavirus in countries. COVID-19 cases and lockdown days data were collected for 49 countries that implemented the lockdown between certain dates (without interruption). The correlation tests were used for data analysis based on unconstrained (normal) and constrained (Tukey-lambda). The lockdown days was significantly correlated with COVID-19 pandemic based on unconstrained (r = −0.9126, F-ratio = 6.1654; t-ratio = 2.40; prob > .0203 with 49 observations) and based on Tukey-lambda (r = 0.7402, λ = 0.14). The lockdown, one of the social isolation restrictions, has been observed to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic, and showed that the spread of the virus can be significantly reduced by this preventive restriction in this study. This study offers initial evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic can be suppressed by a lockdown. The application of lockdown by governments is also thought to be effective on psychology, environment and economy besides having impact on Covid-19.