As lockdown rules eased for millions of weary Melburnians, Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg asserted that no other city on the planet had suffered for so long under these restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"[H]ere in Melbourne, very sadly, we've endured the longest lockdown in the world," he said during a radio interview.

It's a claim Mr Frydenberg repeated several times, including in an opinion piece published in the Herald Sun.

"Melbourne has gone from the world's most liveable city to the world's most locked-down city," he wrote.

But while there is no doubt Melbourne ranked among the cities to have faced the longest and most arduous series of lockdowns, whether it ranked as number one is questionable.

Several media articles identified Melbourne as the city which has endured the longest lockdown, although they appeared to have only considered a handful of cities in their calculations.

Fact Check's research found Melbourne had been under so-called "stay-at-home" orders for a cumulative 277 days when Mr Frydenberg made his claim, five days before the city’s sixth lockdown was ended.

But considering the generous exemptions that applied during part of Melbourne’s first lockdown, that total is more like 257 days — illustrating the difficulty in making like-for-like comparisons without access to similar information for other cities.

Fact Check was unable to find a comprehensive dataset covering restrictions across every city in the world.

However, there were enough examples to suggest Melburnians may not actually hold the crown for the most days spent locked down.

In northern Chile, for example, residents in at least one city spent 287 days under strict stay-at-home orders.

And certain residents of the Philippines capital, Manila — including anyone aged under the age of 15 or over 65 — were forced to stay home for more than 450 days.

Still, Melbourne's broad stay-at-home rules applied for more individual days than those in Buenos Aires, whose 245 days of lockdown were widely regarded as being among the world's most gruelling.

That total included 234 consecutive days of citywide quarantine, more than twice the length of any individual Melbourne lockdown.

Verdict: Mr Frydenberg’s claim is not clear cut.