Covid infections were falling before lockdowns were introduced across Europe, new figures suggest.

Statisticians at the University of Edinburgh compiled figures from 10 countries where accurate daily death numbers were available, and calculated when those people must have become infected.

Out of 17 lockdowns introduced between March 2020 and March 2022, only the first Belgian restriction, and the second Italian, preceded a fall in infections.

For all the others – including England’s three lockdowns – infections had already peaked before the country was ordered into isolation, raising questions about whether such harsh restrictions were required.

Prof Simon Wood, of Edinburgh’s School of Mathematics, said it challenged claims that locking down sooner could have saved thousands of lives.

“It’s complete hokum,” said Prof Wood. “Infections were already falling before we locked down and that should give pause for thought.

“They were an overreaction and a political response to what people were clamouring for, in spite of the data.”

Although death rates all peaked after lockdowns, infections had begun to slump weeks earlier, in countries including England, Portugal, Spain, Scotland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark.

In Sweden, which did not lock down, the figures showed that cases peaked at roughly the same time as the countries that did isolate their populations.

The paper, which was published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, also criticised the government for “intentionally distorting” the risk of Covid for healthy young people.

The researchers also warned the “economic shock” caused by the pandemic response may eventually outweigh lives saved through interventions, and said the government had gone over its budget constraints for medical interventions by tenfold.

Prof Wood added: “The general message is that there was a lot of exaggeration of Covid risk and an underplaying of the risks of response.”

Prof John Ioannidis of Stanford University said the paper highlighted a “misleading pandemic narrative” which was “impossible to defend”.

“The way the science was hijacked by advocacy, activism and conflicted stakeholders during the Covid-19 pandemic will require careful study for many years to come,” he said.

“Lockdown measures were unlikely to reduce infections much and save lives in the long term once the virus had been introduced.

The Telegraph — 12 February 2026.