California's early lockdown measures may have prevented 1.7 million COVID-19 cases, researchers say

• A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that lockdown measures enforced in the US helped prevent 4.8 million cases of COVID-19.
• That includes 1.7 million avoided infections in the state of California, researchers told The San Francisco Chronicle.
• California was the first state in the US to implement a stay-at-home order on March 19.
• The study, published in Nature, comes as California and other states inch forward with reopening plans, which experts warn could increase coronavirus cases.

A new study shows the lockdown measures implemented to stunt the spread of the coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19, helped prevent or delay 4.8 million cases of infection in the US.

The study, published in Nature and conducted by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, examined the effects of infection control measures implemented across six countries, including the US, China, and Italy. The measures include shelter-in-place orders, travel bans, social distancing, and working from home, as Business Insider's Aria Bendix reports.

The policies collectively helped prevent or stall 62 million confirmed cases from March 3 to April 6 throughout the six countries surveyed, the study said.

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4.8 million more people in the US could have been confirmed infected by April 6 had human contact not been minimized, the researchers found. As it is, there were about 365,000 confirmed cases by April 6. The US currently has at least 1.9 million confirmed cases, and more than 100,000 deaths.

In the state of California, specifically, lockdown measures stopped 1.7 million infections, the researchers told The San Francisco Chronicle. On April 6, California had 16,500 confirmed cases. Of course, confirmed cases are only a portion of total infections.

California was the first state to enforce a stay-at-home order on March 19, just two days after the San Francisco Bay Area issued its own. Early on, both the state and the region served as a national role model as other parts of the country followed suit.

It and other states are now inching forward with reopening phases, allowing some businesses and restaurants to reopen, which could increase the risk of more infections.

But even as the San Francisco Bay Area and other parts of the state have been able to temper infection rates, the state of California has yet to flatten the curve — there was a 40% jump in COVID-19 cases the first week of June, NPR reported. There are currently at least 131,319 confirmed cases in the state of California, with 4,653 reported deaths. Los Angeles County has seen the highest number of cases, according to NPR.