NEW DELHI: The Centre on Saturday said that its measure of enforcing a three-week lockdown on March 25 may have prevented a blast of COVID-19 cases which could have reached a figure of 8.2 lakh by April 15 in the worst-case scenario.
In the daily briefing, the Union Ministry of Health presented two different hypothetical scenarios of the growth of coronavirus in the country if measures were not taken to contain it.
The first scenario, the ministry said, the corona positive cases could have spiraled to 8.2 lakh by April 15 if India had not implemented either containment or nationwide lockdown, allowing for a 41 per cent growth rate of the cases. “A statistical analysis of rate of growth suggests that if there was no lockdown or containment measure then the cases growing at coumpound growth rate of 41 per cent rate could have resulted in 8.2 lakh cases by Apr 15,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the ministry.
The second scenario measures the efficacy of steps taken for virus containment alone, without taking into account the additional benefit accrued from the implementation of the three-week-long national lockdown, to say that a total of 1.2 lakh positive cases could have been reported by April 15 if the peak growth rate of the disease 28.9 per cent seen before the implementation of lockdown had sustained.
“Before lockdown, the highest rate of growth of cases was at around 28.9 per cent and at that rate perhaps the numbers could have risen to 1.2 lakh cases by April 15, and if we compare it to the situation after the implementation of lockdown and containment measures after March 25 then we have seen a significant reduction in the number of cases,” Agarwal added.
While the government said that the cases before March 25 did grow at a peak CGR of 28.9 per cent, no explanation was offered for the CGR 41 per cent considered for the worst case scenario.
The third scenario is the current situation under which there are now at least 7,529 positive cases in India that includes 242 deaths. The health ministry official said this reduced figure compared to the other two scenarios has been made possible only due to the twin impact of containment measures and the nationwide lockdown.
The ministry insisted that the first two scenarios are based purely on a statistical analysis involving the rate of growth of coronavirus cases.
The data is then projected using variables to arrive at the possible number of positive cases in two different situations.
“The purpose of this exercise is to underline the importance of containment measures and the nationwide lockdown in keeping the number of infections in India from growing exponentially, like seen in Europe and US,” Agarwal said.
The Centre’s analysis came on a day when most chief ministers, during a video conference with the PM, suggested an extention to the lockdown.