Coronavirus growth in India linear, not exponential, much better than US, UK, says govt

india

Updated: Apr 23, 2020 20:30 IST

The government on Thursday said that the coronavirus growth in India has been more or less linear and not exponential due to the success of certain strategies and the country had fared much better than developed countries like the United States and the UK on this count. Centre also noted that the country’s recovery rate of covid cases has been rising steadily to reach close to 20% with 4,257 people out of total 21,393 infections have been cured so far including 388 who were cured yesterday.

An analysis of India’s containment strategy was presented during the daily briefing by the officials of health and home ministry, which was also attended by C. K Mishra. Mishra is the chairman of the second of the 11 empowered groups formed by the government to channelize country’s response to the contagion.

The government officials pointed out another positive development seen in the addition of eight new names to the list of districts across the country that have not reported any new coronavirus case in the last 14 days. The list of such districts has now swelled to 78, said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, health ministry.

He added that a total of 1409 additional positive coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours taking the total number of active cases to 16,454.

Mishra said that the last 30 days of national lockdown indicate that India’s containment efforts have been successful to a large extent.

“We have been able to cut transmissions, minimize the spread and increase the doubling rate. We have also been able to consistently ramp up our testing and have utilized this time to prepare ourselves for the future challenges the virus may present,” he said.

He added that the percentage of positive cases vis-a-viz the number of tests conducted has stayed almost the same during the last 30 days in India which suggested that there was no exponential jump in infections.

“The growth of the virus has been more or less linear and not exponential due to certain strategies that have helped India contain the spread to a particular level,” said Mishra.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

It is important to note that both the number of tests and positive cases have risen in the last month.

The official said that India has far less number of positive cases per 5 lakh tests done compared to Italy, UK, US and Spain. He added that South Korea was one major country that had done even better than India on that parameter.

Shedding further light on the containment strategy, the government official said that India had successfully decentralized its response to the virus by roping in the private sector and empowering districts to be at the forefront of disease fighting.

“We have expanded the testing base, expanded the test base and we have mobilized all resources in the public and private domain. We have decentralized our response to coronavirus by mobilizing the private and the private sector. We will expand our testing further to a much higher level in the days to come,” the official said.

He added that the government’s first strategic goal is to ensure that people don’t have to visit hospitals for treatment of coronavirus and it is achieved through social distancing, lockdown and taking care of the elderly.

The government’s second goal, he said, is to create enough infrastructure and health facility for every person who has to visit hospital for Covid care.

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