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

The lockdown, if implemented correctly in the end, has a high chance of reducing the total number of COVID-19 cases in the short term, and buy India invaluable time to prepare its healthcare and disease monitoring system. Our analysis shows we need to have some measures of suppression in place after the lockdown for the best outcome. We cannot heavily rely on the hypothetical prevention governed by meteorological factors such as temperature based on current evidence. From an epidemiological perspective, a longer lockdown between 42-56 days is preferable. However, the lockdown comes at a tremendous price to social and economic health through a contagion process not dissimilar to that of the coronavirus itself. Data can play a defining role as we design post-lockdown testing, reopening and resource allocation strategies.