Fishing for a pat? Learn it from Centre Government’s worst-case scenario runs into inflation charge

India’s coronavirus count would have grown to more than 200,000 patients by April 15, or around 25 times the current number, without the 21-day lockdown and containment measures, the health ministry said on Saturday. Releasing a single slide, the ministry said the number of the country’s Covid-19 patients would have increased to 208,544 with neither the lockdown nor containment measures, and to 45,370 with only the containment measures but no lockdown. Health researchers tracking the growth of Covid-19 said that while the lockdown and containment measures were critical and carried enormous value, the single slide released by the government was not sufficient to determine whether the extrapolations were right.


A senior health official said the extrapolations were based on a statistical growth analysis. The lockdown and the multiple containment measures — isolating positive patients, tracing contacts and the quarantining of suspects — are designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus. On Saturday, the country’s count of Covid-19 patients grew by 768, raising the number of confirmed cases to 7,529, including 242 deaths, 36 of them overnight. The health official said the extrapolated count of 208,544 was based on a 41 per cent projected growth rate while the extrapolated count of 45,370 was based on a 28 per cent projected growth rate. The ministry did not respond to a query from The Telegraph on the source of the projected rates. Independent researchers engaged in disease modelling efforts said the limited information provided by the health ministry made it difficult to assess the extrapolated numbers. “The basis for using 41 per cent or 28 per cent as the projected growth rates is not clear,” said Ronojoy Adhikari, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge in the UK.