Chennai: Despite India reporting tens of hundreds of corona cases in last one month, the country’s death rate of about three per cent is lower than the global rate, and also much lower than several European countries like the UK, Italy and Spain, according to medical experts. They also suggest that Covid-19 cases would come down in India from the last week of April.
India fares better as compared to other countries such as the United States, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Korea and Britain in the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT).
The tracker, based on data from 73 countries, that calculates governments’ response to Covid-19 has identified India’s response as one of the most stringent in the world.
Created by researchers from Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, the ‘Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker’ is designed to systematically record government responses worldwide and aggregate the scores into a common ‘Stringency Index’.
India, along with Israel, Mauritius, New Zealand and South Africa, has scored a perfect 100 which means that the Indian government has implemented all measures factored by the Oxford research team to contain the virus spread.
The government moved swiftly since the virus arrived in the country and unveiled a series of measures to contain the outbreak. It announced a 21-day lockdown, ramped up testing, closed public transport and international travel as well banned flights from overseas. It has announced measures to support the poor and the Reserve Bank of India has unleashed interest rate cuts and liquidity-enhancing steps.
According to the data on the Oxford tracker, India has consistently been on the upper band of the index, suggesting that the response was quick while other countries lagged in unveiling quick measures. But it cautioned that the Stringency Index should not be interpreted as a measure of the appropriateness or effectiveness of a government’s response. It does not provide information on how well policies are enforced, it said.