Up to 78k lives saved due to curbs: Centre
NEW DELHI: The nationwide lockdown that followed the outbreak of the coronavirus disease pandemic prevented between 1.4 million and 2.9 million cases of the viral infection, and 37,000 to 78,000 deaths, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said on Monday, the first day of Parliament’s monsoon session.
India also has been able to limit coronavirus cases to 3,328 per million population and deaths to 55 per million, which is one of the lowest in the world, the minister said in a statement on Covid-19 management. The four-phase lockdown was enforced on March 25 and remained in effect until May 31. First phase of Unlock began on June 1. India’s tally of infections has reached 4,926, 778 and death toll to 80,807 as of Monday.
Besides limiting the number of coronavirus disease infections and fatalities, the lockdown offered India a chance to reinforce its health infrastructure to tackle the disease, Harsh Vardhan said. Lockdown was used to enhance human resource and produce within India critical elements such as protective personal equipment (PPE), N-95 masks and ventilators, he said.
“A case in point is increase in dedicated isolation beds by 36.3 times and dedicated ICU {intensive care unit} beds above 24.6 times to what existed in March 2020. Whereas there was no indigenous manufacturing of PPE, with the requisite standards, at that point in time, we are now self-sufficient and in a position, to even export the same,” he said.
Health experts are divided on how effective the lockdown has been. “India has managed to keep the numbers low both in terms of cases and deaths considering India’s huge population and densely populated areas. More than the cases, what matters is how many lives we have managed to save, and the numbers say the country has done a decent job of bringing the fatality rate to below 2%. Measures such as implementing early lockdown were instrumental.. Lockdown wasn’t meant to stop cases, it was meant to give us the time to prepare to manage the pandemic,” says Dr Jugal Kishore, head, community medicine, Safdarjung Hospital.
Dr T Jacob John, former head of the virology department at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, differed.“The lockdown has not been a lockdown in the true sense of the word in India because if it were then you wouldn’t see cases going up by leaps and bounds right under the lockdown,” he said.
The maximum number of cases and deaths have been reported from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Bihar, Telangana, Odisha, Assam, Kerala and Gujarat. All these states have reported at least 100,000 cases.
As of September 12, 2020, a total of 15,284 Covid treatment facilities with 1,314,646 dedicated isolation beds without oxygen support have been created. “Constant monitoring of the disease trend, analysis of available infrastructure and planning in advance has averted a major crisis as was faced by many developed countries...a total of 12,826 quarantine centres with 5,98,811 beds have been created,” Vardhan said.