What have we learned so far from three cities’ lockdowns

More than half of Australia’s population is in lockdown in a bid to control a worsening COVID-19 outbreak. These lockdowns are wearing some people down mentally and generating a lot of interstate hostility — particularly towards New South Wales.

The three capital cities in these jurisdictions — Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne — are now all shut down. Each began on a different date, and the rules differ a little, too. But putting aside the political acrimony of the lockdown debate, what can we learn from how people moved during that time?

Melbourne

This week, Google published travel data showing how these cities’ residents responded during the first two weeks of their restrictions — the crucial period, according to epidemiologists.

Sydney

Canberrans closed up hardest and fastest

The charts below are the result of Google using devices (mostly mobile phones) to track where people go.

***(chart 1)

The two clearest impacts of lockdown were obvious: people spent more time at home and less time at work. (Day 0 in the charts marks the day each city-wide lockdown began.)

The reaction of Canberrans differed significantly to residents in Sydney and Melbourne, though there are some obvious explanations. The ACT workforce has always been skewed towards administrative or knowledge jobs — work that’s comparatively easy to do at home.

Nor had Canberrans endured four months of lockdown last year, as Melburnians did. Before their lockdown, which began on August 12, ACT residents had enjoyed a relatively carefree year without a known case of local infection.

As such, they had no reason to have “lockdown fatigue”.

Sydneysiders were granted more freedoms

A key difference between the three cities was the rules of each lockdown.

***(chart 2)

When the NSW government ordered a city-wide shutdown on June 23, most residents were not limited in the time they could exercise or enjoy outdoor recreation, nor how far they could travel to do it (if they stayed in the city).

A wider range of businesses and stores were also permitted to stay open, though these policies were later tightened. The data shows that, in this early stage, Sydneysiders spent more time at outdoor leisure venues than people under harsher restrictions.

And while images of crowds enjoying themselves at the beach angered some, in most cases they simply showed people complying with NSW health orders.

Looking for lockdown lessons

None of the cities’ lockdowns have worked perfectly so far — COVID-19 continues to spread among all three populations. At the same time, all of the lockdowns have, to varying extents, slowed infection rates and prevented deaths.

The NSW government has been accused — including by other governments — of imposing a “lockdown-lite”, allowing the disease to spread further.

Yet, overall, the mobility data shows relatively small differences in how Sydneysiders and Melburnians altered their habits. The value of this data is not in scoring political points; it’s in helping to work out what restrictions work best.

For example, does it matter how much time people spend outside? Which travel patterns are associated with high local infection rates?

We’ll need answers to these questions at some point because lockdowns are likely to be part of life — coming and going as needed — as we learn to “live with the virus” for years to come.