Countries and territories around the world enforced lockdowns of varying stringency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some included total movement control while others enforced restrictions based on time. In many cases, only essential businesses were allowed to remain open. Schools, universities and colleges closed either on a nationwide or local basis in 63 countries, affecting approximately percent of the world's student population.
Beginning with the first lockdown in China's Hubei province and nationwide in Italy in March 2020, lockdowns continued to be implemented in many countries throughout 2020 and 2021. On 24 March 2020, the entire 1.3 billion population of India was ordered to stay at home during its lockdown, making it the largest of the pandemic. The world's longest continuous lockdown lasting 234 days took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2020. As of October 2021, the city of Melbourne, Australia, and certain cities in Peru and Chile spent the most cumulative days in lockdown over separate periods, although measures varied between these countries.
A few countries and territories did not use the strategy, including Japan, Belarus, Nicaragua, Sweden, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tanzania, Uruguay, two states in Brazil and certain United States states.
Countries and territories with lockdowns.
Australia.
A number of Australian states, territories, and cities have implemented lockdowns in response to the pandemic. The country entered a general nationwide lockdown on 23 March 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, which was lifted on 15 May 2020.
The state of Victoria, particularly its capital city of Melbourne, the country's second most populous city with five million residents, entered an extended lockdown on 7 July 2020 in response to a rapidly growing community outbreak. Initial measures included the closure of all non-essential services, including retail entertainment venues and gyms. Restaurant and bar establishments were permitted to open in take-away and delivery capacities only. Schools and childcare facilities were also ordered to close. Face coverings were made mandatory as of 23 July 2020, with a fine of $200 AUD for non-compliance to those above 12 years of age, although formal exemptions could be acquired. Initially scheduled to last six weeks, restrictions were tightened further on 2 August after cases continued to grow, including a ban on travel further than a five kilometre radius from place of residence, a nighttime curfew of 8pm to 5am, a one-hour limit on outdoor exercise, a one-person per day limit on shopping for essentials, and public gatherings limited to a maximum of two people. Restrictions were progressively eased as the case rate declined, and were completely lifted on 28 October. With a total duration of 112 days, the Victorian lockdown was at the time the longest continuous period of COVID-19 lockdown globally as of October 2020. The lockdown resulted in the state recording zero active cases of COVID-19 in November 2020.
Victoria entered its fourth lockdown on 28 May 2021 in response to an outbreak of the Delta variant. Originally scheduled for seven days, the lockdown was extended to two weeks and lifted on 10 June. Another outbreak of the Delta variant saw Greater Sydney enter lockdown on 26 June 2021, scheduled to last until 16 July, but extended by two weeks on 14 July then until 28 August and the end of September 2021. Combined with snap lockdowns declared in Brisbane, Perth, and Darwin, more than 12 million people were in lockdown across Australia on 29 June 2021.
Brief "snap lockdowns" in response to new clusters, particularly of the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants, have been implemented at various times across the country.
Metropolitan Melbourne's 6th lockdown ended in October 2021, with the city spending among the longest amounts of time spent in lockdown in the world.
Austria.
In November 2021, Austria introduced lockdown measures, but only for unvaccinated people, in response to an increase in cases and low vaccination rate. The country introduced a lockdown for all citizens a few days later, making it the first European country to reintroduce such measures in the winter of 2021.
Bangladesh.
On 22 March 2020, Bangladesh announced a ten-day lockdown, starting from 26 March. The lockdown in the country was extended several times to 30 May.
Cambodia.
On 15 April 2021, Cambodia's government enacted a strict stay-at-home order across the entirety of Phnom Penh and Ta Khmau in response to the country's largest COVID-19 outbreak of the pandemic. Certain districts were declared as "red zones", banning people from leaving their homes except for medical emergencies. Sihanoukville also entered a lockdown on 24 April.
Canada.
On 25 January 2020, the first identified presumptive case in Canada was a 56-year-old male who had travelled to Wuhan, China, before returning to Toronto on 22 January. Canada issued a travel advisory against non-essential travel to China due to the outbreak, including a regional travel advisory to avoid all travel to the province of Hubei.
Federal health officials stated that the risk in Canada was low.
On 26 January 2020, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam tweeted, "There is no clear evidence that this virus is spread easily from person to person. The risk to Canadians remains low."
Three days later, on 29 January, Dr. Tam told Canadians that "It's going to be rare, but we are expecting cases."
On 1 February, the position of the prime minister and the administration remained that it would be discriminatory to exclude travellers from China, the source (and, at the time, still the epicentre) of the disease.
During March, Canadian provinces implemented lockdowns in response to COVID-19.
Ontario, the country's most populous province, had its first provincewide lockdown starting on 26 December 2020. The lockdown was strengthened with a stay-at-home order effective 14 January 2021, and reopened on a regional basis starting 10 February. As a result of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the province caused by SARS-CoV-2 variants, the government of Ontario once again announced a four-week provincewide shutdown effective 3 April. This shutdown was once again strengthened with another 28-day stay-at-home order starting 8 April, in order to quickly combat the urgent crisis in the province's hospital capacity being caused by the variants.
The city of Toronto, Ontario is considered to have the longest continuous COVID-19 lockdown of any major city in the world.
China.
China was the first country to enforce the quarantine and lockdown of cities and later whole provinces in late January 2020. Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping said he personally authorized the unprecedented lockdown of Wuhan and other cities beginning on 23 January. Although such measures are a very old tool of epidemic control, their use at the scale of a large city such as Wuhan or the even larger scale of provinces was controversial among experts at the time, with questions about their effectiveness and their ethics. Some public health experts, while not always condemning the measure, raised the issue of the inevitable psychological toll such measures would have. An ex-World Health Organization (WHO) official who headed the organization's Western Pacific Region during the SARS outbreak said that "the containment of a city [hadn't] been done in the history of international public health policy". The WHO called the decision to quarantine Wuhan "new to science". By early April, all lockdowns had ended or relaxed to a certain degree as the cases started to dwindle and the outbreak had come under control.
On March 27, 2022, Shanghai experienced an extended lockdown. Many residents lacked food. On June 1, 2022, Shanghai was returning to normal.
Fiji.
On 19 March 2020, Fiji confirmed its first case in Lautoka. In response, the Government of Fiji ordered the lockdown of the city on 20 March with closures of all schools and non-essential services all over the country. On 3 April 2020, Fiji's capital, Suva, went into lockdown after confirming two new cases. More than 300,000 residents were confined to their homes and all non-essential services in the city was closed for two weeks.
On 19 April 2021, Nadi and Lautoka went into lockdown after recording its first community transmission in one year. As cases continues to escalate in its second wave, the government has ruled out any possibility of a nationwide lockdown but would focus on targeted lockdowns of communities instead.
France.
From 17 March 2020, all people in France were required to complete and carry an exemption form to leave their homes and can be fined for non-essential journeys. Essential journeys include shopping for food, travelling to and from work, accessing healthcare, and exercising within 1 km of the home for up to 1 hour. Police around the country had set up road blocks to check people who were out and about had good reason and that their exemption declarations were in order. These measures were lifted on 11 May 2020, with remaining restrictions on travel further than 100 km away from one's residence. The latter restrictions were lifted on 2 June 2020.
On October 28, president Emmanuel Macron announced a second lockdown to begin on October 30. During this second lockdown, schools remain open and more industries can keep operating (construction, public services...). Like the first lockdown, citizens need to sign their certificates to can go around within 1 km up to hour per day. Fines are 135 euros the 1st time, 200 euros for 2 times within 15 days and 3750 euros and 6 months jail sentence for 3 times within 30 days. This lockdown was replaced by a curfew on December 15, 2020 which was itself abolished on June 20, 2021.
Iran.
There were night/day curfews put periodically in place in yellow and orange coded regions.
Ireland.
On 12 March, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced the closure of all schools, colleges and childcare facilities in Ireland until the end of August. On 27 March, Varadkar announced a national stay-at-home order for at least two weeks; the public were ordered to stay at home in all circumstances. All non-essential shops and services, including all pubs, bars, hotels and nightclubs closed and all public and private gatherings of any number of people was banned. The Garda Síochána (Irish police) were given power to enforce the measures, which were repeatedly extended until 18 May.
A roadmap to easing restrictions in Ireland that included five stages was adopted by the government on 1 May 2020 and subsequently published online. The fourth and final phase of easing COVID-19 restrictions in Ireland was initially scheduled to take place on 20 July, but was repeatedly postponed until 31 August at the earliest.
On 7 August, Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced a regional lockdown and a series of measures for counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly following significant increases of COVID-19 cases in the three counties, which came into effect from midnight and will remain in place for two weeks.
On 15 September, the Government announced a that included five levels of restrictions.
All non-essential businesses and services closed and all public and private gatherings of any number of people was banned again on 21 October following the Government's announcement to move the entire country to lockdown restrictions for six weeks until 1 December. On 27 November, the Government agreed to ease restrictions from 1 December.
A third wave of COVID-19 arrived in Ireland on 21 December. The Government acted swiftly and on 22 December, lockdown restrictions with a number of adjustments were announced, which came into effect from Christmas Eve until 12 January 2021 at the earliest.
All non-essential businesses and services closed and all public and private gatherings of any number of people was banned again on 31 December (New Year's Eve) following the Government's announcement to move the entire country to full lockdown restrictions from 30 December until 31 January 2021 at the earliest, in an attempt to get a third surge in cases of COVID-19 under control. On 26 January, the Government extended the lockdown restrictions until 5 March. On 23 February, the Government extended the Level 5 lockdown restrictions for another six weeks until 5 April (Easter Monday) at the earliest, while its new revised Living with COVID-19 plan was published.
On 30 March, the Government announced a phased easing of restrictions from Monday 12 April. On 29 April, the Government announced a reopening plan for the country throughout May and June from 10 May, with a further reopening planned announced on 31 August that would see all remaining COVID-19 restrictions in Ireland eased by 22 October.
After a fourth wave of COVID-19 arrived in Ireland in October, the Government published on 19 October a revised plan for the easing of restrictions, with nightclubs allowed to reopen, however the continued