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Is Melbourne really the world's most locked-down city?

Posted: 2021-10-24 21:08:17

Original link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-25/fact-check-is-melbourne-most-locked-down-city/100560172

The claim

As lockdown rules ease for millions of weary Melburnians, Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has asserted that no other city on the planet has suffered for so long under these restrictions.

"[H]ere in Melbourne, very sadly, we've endured the longest lockdown in the world," he said during a September 2021 interview.

"Consider that. The longest lockdown in the world here in Melbourne."

It's a claim Mr Frydenberg has repeated several times, including in an opinion piece published on October 16.

"Melbourne has gone from the world's most liveable city to the world's most locked-down city," he wrote.

So, has Melbourne had the world's longest lockdown?

RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.

The verdict

Mr Frydenberg's claim is not clear cut.

There is no doubt that Melbourne ranks among the cities to have faced the longest and most arduous series of lockdowns. But whether it ranks as number one is questionable.

Several media articles have identified Melbourne as the city which has endured the longest lockdown, although they appear to have only considered a handful of cities in their calculations.

A suburban shopping strip. — Melbourne has clearly been one of the more locked-down cities of the world during the pandemic, but there is at least one city which was locked down for longer.(ABC News: Danielle Bonica)

Fact Check's research found Melbourne had been under so-called "stay-at-home" orders for a cumulative 277 days when Mr Frydenberg made his October 16 claim, five days before the latest orders were finally lifted.

But considering the generous exemptions that applied during part of the city's first lockdown, that total is more like 257 days — illustrating the difficulty in making like-for-like comparisons without access to similar information for other cities.

Fact Check was unable to find a comprehensive dataset covering restrictions across every city in the world.

However, there are enough examples to suggest Melburnians may not actually hold the crown for the most days spent locked down.

In northern Chile, for example, residents in at least one city spent 287 days under strict stay-at-home orders.

And certain residents of the Philippines capital, Manila — including anyone aged under the age of 15 or over 65 — were forced to stay home for more than 450 days.

Still, Melbourne's broad stay-at-home rules applied for more individual days than those in Buenos Aires, whose 245 days of lockdown are widely regarded as being among the world's most gruelling.

That total included 234 consecutive days of citywide quarantine, more than twice the length of any individual Melbourne lockdown.

Source of the claim

Asked for the source of his claim, Mr Frydenberg's office sent Fact Check several media stories reporting how Melbourne would wrest the title from the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires.

These reports surveyed just seven capital cities, with the Herald Sun (on September 24) and Yahoo News (on September 23) offering the most comprehensive lists.

Each of the reports sent to Fact Check measured lockdowns on the basis of "stay-at-home orders".

As the name suggests, these orders typically require residents to remain at home unless they have one of several pre-specified excuses to go out.

A side by side shot of Melbourne and Buenos Aires streets. — During its sixth lockdown, Melbourne surpassed the Argentinian city of Buenos Aires for number of days locked down.(ABC News: John Graham/Reuters: Matias Baglietto)

The international data

Fact Check was unable to find any international dataset to prove definitively which city — among the thousands worldwide — had spent the most days in lockdown.

Detailed data about pandemic restrictions can be found in the COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, compiled by Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government.

However, the project's executive director, Toby Philips, told Fact Check that although the tracker was "the most comprehensive data source in the world on COVID-19 pandemic policy", it was "literally impossible to answer this question using our data".

There are several reasons for this, including that the tracker reports curfews and stay-at-home restrictions together in a single measure.

Crucially, the data largely reflects what's happening to countries, not cities.

To illustrate its limitations, Mr Philips explained that if three separate cities in one country had successive month-long lockdowns, the tracker "would report that as three continuous months of city-level restrictions, but we don't record which city".

No black and white measure

Melbourne's CBD with few people. — What constitutes a lockdown?(ABC News: Darryl Torpy)

Exactly what constitutes a lockdown is a matter of some interpretation, and although stay-at-home orders offer a rough basis for comparison, they are far from precise.

During Melbourne's first lockdown in 2020, for example, stay-at-home orders remained until May 31 but were significantly weakened from May 12.

The change added a new excuse for being able to go out, allowing groups of five people to "visit friends, family and loved ones" in their homes, or meet outside in groups of 10, during the last 19 days of the stay-home period.

According to an article Mr Frydenberg sent to Fact Check, which contained numbers matching his own tally, these 19 days were excluded from the final total.

Stay-at-home rules were also eased before orders were lifted during Melbourne's second lockdown, but while this allowed hairdressers to reopen and groups of 10 to socialise outdoors, home visits remained banned.

How long was Melbourne in 'lockdown'?

When Mr Frydenberg made his claim on October 16, Melbourne was well into its sixth lockdown, with stay-at-home orders in force for 72 days.

The preceding five lockdowns add another 204 days, bringing the total to 276.

Excluding the 19 days of "soft" lockdown, outlined above, the total falls to 257.

This count only considers citywide lockdowns, though some Melbourne postcodes were under restrictions for an extra week in 2020.

These lockdowns varied in length, with the shortest lasting only five days.

Following Mr Frydenberg's claim, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced there would be "no more lockdowns across the board" after October 21.

Although this date falls beyond the period being assessed by Fact Check, it brought to 262 days the total period that Melbourne has been under strict stay-at-home orders.

What about Argentina?

The title of longest individual lockdown likely goes to Buenos Aires, whose 234 days straight of home quarantine outdid Melbourne's longest stretch by 133 days.

Fact Check referred to the plight of Buenos Aires in September last year when checking a similar claim made by former prime minister Tony Abbott. By then, its residents had been under stay-at-home orders for 166 days.

The city's restrictions were arguably tougher than Melbourne's, at times banning outdoor exercise entirely.

The capital continued under stay-at-home orders until November 8.

People could initially meet in groups of 10, but home visits remained off the table for a further three weeks.

In 2021, residents of Buenos Aires were sent back into home quarantine for nine days in late May and two more in early June, taking the cumulative total to 245 days.

And then there's Chile

Chile flag — Some cities in Chile were locked down as long or longer than Melbourne.(Lucianoan / Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Though it is impossible to identify a winner without comprehensive international data, Fact Check has found at least one city whose residents had to spend more individual days stuck at home than Melburnians did.

The port city of Iquique, in Chile's north, was under stay-at-home orders for a total of 287 days.

In July 2020, the Chilean government introduced four stages of restrictions, with "quarantine" the toughest, followed by "transition".

Quarantine meant residents could not leave home unless for essential reasons. Trips to the shops were limited to twice per week, while outdoor exercise had to be taken within a set five-hour window.

Critically, these quarantine rules remained in place on weekends throughout the transition stage.

This meant that on Saturdays and Sundays a permit was required just to walk your dog (and only for 30 minutes within two blocks of home.)

Even during the week, despite many other rules easing, pubs remained closed, indoor dining prohibited and home visitors capped at five people.

Over nearly 14 months, the people of Iquique languished for 241 days under stretches of quarantine and were forced to stay home on weekends for a further 46 days, with just two weeks where these rules were lifted.

Further north, the city of Arica also spent 227 days in quarantine and 34 in transition, surpassing Melbourne's 257 days of home confinement by four days.

By the end of its lockdown, the Victorian capital had squeaked ahead by just one day.

However, it's worth considering whether that extra day outweighs the extra 17 weeks that residents of Arica remained under curfew and without access to pubs or dining-in on weekdays.

'Most locked-down' residents?

Dilapidated buildings on a street filled with bikes are covered in brightly coloured political posters — Some residents of Manila were locked down for far longer than Melbourne.(ABC News: Dave Tacon)

Finally, although Mr Frydenberg spoke of cities as a whole, there may be certain residents of other cities who have been under lockdown for far longer than anyone has been in Melbourne.

In Manila, broad stay-at-home orders have been applied less frequently as the pandemic has worn on.

However, a substantial chunk of the population has not benefited from the more relaxed rules, including any person aged below 15 years of age or over 65, along with pregnant women and anyone with "health risks".

At various times, Manila's authorities have broadened the age range to capture anyone under 18.

According to national rules that have remained broadly similar since early in the pandemic, these people — and anyone who lived with them — were "required to remain in their residences at all times" unless leaving for essential reasons.

Those reasons did not include attending school which, barring a September pilot run, had not resumed in the form of face-to-face learning by October 2021.

Most children were finally exempted from stay-at-home orders on July 9, 2021, around a month after concessions were made for vaccinated seniors.

In total, both groups spent more than 450 days under stay-at-home orders from when they were introduced on March 17, 2020.

Principal researcher: David Campbell

factcheck@rmit.edu.au

Sources

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