Melbourne’s tough Stage 4 restrictions have been compared to China’s lockdown of Wuhan – the city where COVID-19 first emerged.
But are people in Melbourne really worse off than Wuhan residents were back in January?
Speaking on Today on Tuesday, Health Minister Greg Hunt said Melbourne would end up being in a longer lockdown than Wuhan after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews extended Stage 4 restrictions.
Melbourne’s lockdown
When Melbourne completes its strict Stage 4 lockdown, which began on August 2 and was recently extended until September 28, residents will have endured the nation’s toughest restrictions for two months.
Notably, this period does not include the introduction of Stage 3 lockdown on July 8, which banned Melburnians from leaving home except for one of four reasons.
Even after September 28, residents must abide by strict stay-at-home rules, including a 9pm to 5am curfew, until at least October 26.
If the Victorian government’s roadmap unfolds as planned, Melburnians will have been confined to their homes for more than 15 weeks – just shy of three months.
How does it compare to Wuhan?
On January 23, after the coronavirus started to rapidly spread in Wuhan, the city of 11 million people was thrown under the biggest and strictest lockdown the world had ever seen.
Horror stories emerged of dead bodies piling up outside hospitals, journalists being kidnapped and Chinese police forcibly removing residents from their homes and putting them into quarantine.
In one tragic incident, a 17-year-old boy with cerebral palsy died because his relatives were taken into quarantine and no one was around to look after him.
Many residents had no access to food in their neighbourhoods and were forced to order groceries via WeChat to be delivered to their homes.
The lockdown finally lifted two-and-a-half months later, on April 8, with healthy residents free to leave the city.
A look at strict lockdowns around the world
In January, France recorded the first death from COVID-19 outside Asia after an infected Chinese tourist died in hospital in Paris.
It didn’t take long for the highly infectious virus to rapidly spread.
Lockdown began on March 17 and was extended twice until May 11.
Nearly all shops were shut down except supermarkets and pharmacies, and all workers were encouraged to work from home.
Once the coronavirus took hold of Italy in February, the nation was in serious trouble.
By March, thousands of Italians had died.
Doctors in the hard-hit northern region were so overwhelmed with patients that many were forced to make life-and-death decisions.
On March 9, the nation entered a strict lockdown that lasted until the first week of May, with some restrictions still in place.
At the time, it was considered the most radical measure implemented against the outbreak outside China.
During Spain’s initial outbreak in March, the nation’s death toll rose so quickly that an ice rink in its capital, Madrid, was converted into a morgue.
A nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 15.
Under one particularly extreme measure, children were banned from leaving their homes for at least six weeks, causing widespread outrage among parents.
Restrictions started to ease in early May, though tough rules on movement remained.
India was quick to introduce lockdown rules in the early months of the pandemic – so quick the government only gave four hours’ notice.
Public transport shut down, schools closed, and a strict curfew was enforced.
Millions of migrant workers who lived hand to mouth were left without an income or a bed as factories and construction sites closed down.
Beggars roamed the streets, and many were beaten by police for breaking curfew.
Despite rapidly climbing infection numbers, India began to reopen at the end of May.
It now has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, behind the United States.
