COVID-19 may be over in India around mid-September, say health ministry officials
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 09-06-2020
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"This is a very good model to support analysis and interpretation of State and District data (whenever the number of cases is high) and it will also help in relevant decision-making in control activities of COVID 19 pandemic," said the study. "This will further help the government to take long-term disease prevention and intervention programs," it said. However Kumar said all the mathematical models are not absolute and it depends upon the quality of data available.
"All states have different policies in reporting the number of cases. Some are reporting only severe cases, while some are reporting both severe and mild cases. A few states conduct less tests, thus report less cases. Therefore it is very important to report correct data for more accurate results," said Kumar. Talking about the implementation of lockdown in the country, Kumar said the lockdown could have yielded even better results.
"We could not achieve what we could have. However the idea of lockdown was very good, but due to various reasons, it was not so effective. Lockdown is more of an administrative decision, but the real measure needs to be taken at community level," Kumar told IANS. "Otherwise, we can not get benefit of it, he added. "If you allow transmission to occur and no measures are taken at community level, then it will be very difficult to control the outbreak," Kumar said.
When asked what percentage of the population will get the infection in India, Kumar said the study does not predict the number of cases in the country. "No one can predict how much the population will get affected - it depends upon so many things such as, from now on, how people are going to maintain distancing and how public health measures will be taken in future. "It also depends upon how different governments are going to act," Kumar said, adding it is very much possible to prevent so many corona cases from occurring in the country.
"There should be uniformity in applying public health measures at the community level throughout the country. My model does not suggest the number of cases. I have only predicted when this will be over. The prediction depends upon the surveillance system and quality of data."