Closed businesses and social distancing helped avert millions of Covid-19 coronavirus infections and deaths. | Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

In the United States, the public health measures averted 60 million infections, researchers found.

Lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, closed schools, and canceled public events prevented millions of Covid-19 coronavirus cases and deaths, according to two new peer-reviewed studies in the journal Nature.

One of the studies estimated the number of Covid-19 cases with and without these tough interventions. They found that in six countries, including China and the US, pandemic control policies had a huge effect. In the United States alone, the measures stopped 4.8 million more confirmed cases of Covid-19 and up to 60 million infections in total. In China, they prevented 285 million infections.

In the second study, researchers looked at the number of deaths from Covid-19 in 11 countries in Europe. They found