According to a study by the scientific journal “Nature,” it is estimated that the lockdown restrictions prevented an additional 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S. alone.

The article studied COVID-19 data in the China, U.S., Italy, South Korea, Iran and France. It estimated that there would have been more than 500 million cases of the virus in those six countries alone if  lockdown measures had not been put in place through early April.

Researchers did not speculate how many people would have died without the strict lockdown restrictions, however findings could not relate any human endeavor that has saved so many lives in such a short period of time.

As of Tuesday, more than 7 million people worldwide had contracted the virus and more than 400,000 people had died. The U.S. continues to lead the world in both infections (1.9 million) and deaths linked to COVID-19 (111,000).

In addition to this study, researchers at Columbia determined that more than 36,000 lives could have been saved in the United States if officials had enacted widespread lockdown restrictions just one week earlier.