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

Four months since the first case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has engulfed the world and has been declared a global pandemic. 1 The number of confirmed cases worldwide stands at a staggering 1,930,780 (as of 9:20 AM EST April 14, 2020, Microsoft bing coronavirus tracker 2 ). Of these, 10,815 confirmed cases are from India (Figure 1) , the world's largest democracy with a population of 1.34 billion (compare China at 1.39 billion and USA at 325.7 million). 3 India has been vigilant and wise in instituting the right public health interventions at the right time including sealing the borders with travel ban/canceling almost all visas, closing schools and colleges in certain states and diligently following up with community inspection of suspected/exposed cases with respect to adherence of quarantine recommendations ( Table 1) . On March 24, India took the historic decision of a 21-day national lockdown starting March 25, when it had reported only 536 COVID-19 cases and 11 fatalities. In the subsequent days we have seen a steady growth in the number of new cases and fatalities, with growth rates slower than other affected countries but in 21 days, the curve has not yet "turned the corner" or showed a steady decline in the number of newly diagnosed cases (Figure 2 ).