While Tally Touches 23,000, India Optimistic To 'Flatten The Curve' Citing Slow Infection Rate

Even as the total number of coronavirus positive cases in India have crossed 23,000-mark, government seems quite optimistic to flatten the curve citing that it has been able to slow down the infection rate.

Striking a positive note on the COVID-19 situation in the country, the Centre on Thursday said that it has been able to minimise the coronavirus spread during the period of the national lockdown which has entered the 30th day.

Top officials of the union government and the Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR) said the situation is "currently stable" and the growth of the infections has been more or less linear and not exponential, adding the testing has also been ramped up consistently though it was not enough.

BCCL

The nationwide lockdown with stringent measures has been in force since March 25 in a bid to halt the spread of the pandemic. It was extended on April 15 for another 19 days till May 3.

The pandemic has infected more than 2.71 million and killed over 1,91,000 people across the world.

In another positive development, the officials said that despite a 24-fold increase in testing, the percentage of positive cases is not rising. ¡°The percentage of positive cases as a ratio of testing is more or less the same as that a month ago.¡±

In epidemiology, the idea of slowing the spread of the virus so that fewer people need to seek treatment at any given time is known as flattening the curve.

"During the 30 days of lockdown, we have been able to cut transmission, minimize spread and increase the doubling days of COVID-19. We have been able to consistently ramp up our testing and utilise our time preparing for the future in case the virus spreads further," Environment Secretary C K Mishra, the chairman of Empowered Group Two, told during a daily media briefing on the COVID-19 situation in the country.

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¡°The growth of COVID-19 cases has been more or less linear, not exponential; this indicates that the strategies we adopted have succeeded in containing the infection to a particular level. Post-imposition of lockdown, while the number of new positive cases has increased by 16 times, testing increased by 24 times," Mishra said in his presentation.

The government asserted that India has done better than a majority of developed countries with respect to the percentage of test cases yielding positive results.