The year 2020 saw many governments around the world introducing strict lockdown interventions to minimise the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cases. The primary reason for imposing lockdowns early was due to governments' fear of public health systems being overwhelmed with patients. However, despite these measures, there were already reports from media outlets during March 2020 of public health systems from developed countries such as Italy being pushed to the brink of collapse by the surge of COVID-19 cases.