COVID-19: India’s doubling rate further improves to 10 days

New Delhi, Apr 25: The ban on international traffic and the lockdown has helped in curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Had these measures not been taken, the number of cases would have been over 1 lakh now, the government has said.

The situation is under control and the doubling rate is now touching 10 days over the last three days. Niti Aayog member V K Paul said that the lockdown and early measures such as travel restrictions and active screening of International passengers at airports, contact tracing and surveillance which covered more than 9.5 lakh people was a result a strong network coordinated by the National Centre of Disease Control with states.

He said that the full effects of the lockdown became evident from April 6 onwards and they will continue to be seen till mid-May.

He said that the decision to impose the lockdown down by Prime Minister Narendra Modi proved to be very timely and beneficial as shown by the change in growth trajectory of India's COVID-19 patients. The curve has begun to flatten. Had we not taken the decision of clamping the national wide lockdown, we would have had around one lakh cases by now as per a reasonable estimate.

If we go back to March 21, cases were doubling in around 3 days. The important turn came on March 23. The direction changed and the doubling rate increased to around 5. By then we already had in place travel restrictions and had created an environment of social distancing. So the results were led by these measures, he also said.

The data available says that the doubling time of positive cases moved from 5.2 days during March 24 to 30. The doubling rate moved to 8.6 days during April 14 and 20. In the last three days it has improved to 10, Dr Paul also said.