COVID-19 in India: Predictions, Reproduction Number and Public Health Preparedness

Balram Rai; Anandi Shukla; Laxmi Kant Dwivedi

Though this growth model provides the crude predictions for COVID-19 in India, but still provides an alarming situation for India in terms of public health preparedness. The active cases will require hospitalizations and ICUs in severe cases. If the exponential growth in the number of confirmed cases continues to grow in upcoming days, this may result in a public health disaster that is being already seen in several countries affected by COVID-19. Therefore, it may not be unrealistic to assume that what has happened in those countries can also happen in India. The density of the health workforce of India is among the lowest. The density of Physicians (7.8 per 10000 population) and nurses (21.1 per 10000 population) is low as compared to the world's average. 20 As compared to developed countries' nurse-to-physician ratio of 3:1, India's ratio is only around 0.6:1. This is a severe issue as the majority of them are concentrated in urban areas catering to only 20% of India's population. 21 depicting this public health capacity of India, it's a matter of grave concern to address the need for hospitalization and ICUs in public health facilities in the case of the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in India.