Predictions, role of interventions and effects of a historic national lockdown in India's response to the COVID-19 pandemic: data science call to arms

Debashree Ray; Maxwell Salvatore; Rupam Bhattacharyya; Lili Wang; Shariq Mohammed; Soumik Purkayastha; Aritra Halder; Alexander Rix; Daniel Barker; Michael Kleinsasser; Yiwang Zhou; Peter Song; Debraj Bose; Mousumi Banerjee; Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani; Parikshit Ghosh; Bhramar Mukherjee

We took the quick adherence epidemiological models and compared the 21-day lockdown with hypothetical 28-, 42-, and 56-day lockdown scenarios (Figure 6 ). When comparing a 21-day lockdown with a hypothetical lockdown of longer duration, we find that 28-, 42-, and 56-day lockdowns can approximately prevent 238 thousand (upper 95% CI 2.3 million), 622 thousand (upper 95% CI 4.3 million), 781 thousand (upper 95% CI 4.6 million) cases by June 15, respectively. A 28-day lockdown does not appear to have a significant impact on cumulative case counts when compared to a 21-day lockdown. However, purely from an epidemiologic perspective, there appears to be some evidence that suggests a 42-or 56-day lockdown would have a more meaningful impact on reducing cumulative COVID-19 case counts in India. We note that longer lockdown periods are accompanied by increasing costs to individuals -notably economicand must be considered. Our models suggest that some form of post-lockdown suppression (e.g., extension of social distancing measures, limits of gathering size, etc.) is necessary to observe longterm benefits of the lockdown period.