ASSESSMENTS

Will India Bear the Brunt of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Apr 14, 2020 | 10:00 GMT

A man wearing a bandana peddles his bicycle in front of a mural depicting the globe covered in a mask on April 13, 2020, in New Delhi, India.

A man bikes past a mural depicting the globe covered in a mask on April 13, 2020, in New Delhi, India. India is currently under an unprecedented national lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19.

(Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)

Highlights

  • The economic and humanitarian fallout from India's COVID-19 crisis could be significant due to the country's constrained health care system, as well as its large populations of immunosuppressed and/or poor citizens who often lack access to clean water and sanitation.  
  • India’s densely populated urban areas and slums, combined with New Delhi’s competing interests with state governments, will also make implementing efforts to contain the virus particularly difficult.
  • But given the risk of a widespread outbreak with a high death toll, the Indian government may have little choice but to continue ramping up economically disruptive lockdown measures. 

India’s accelerating COVID-19 crisis risks quickly overwhelming its health care system and dramatically thwarting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempts to reinvigorate the country’s economy. COVID-19 has begun spreading in India at an exponential rate, with more 9,240 confirmed cases of the virus as of April 13. The true number of cases, however, may be much higher, given that India had only conducted 195,748 tests for COVID-19 for its 1.4 billion people as of April 12.  Thus far, the disease has hit India’s two largest metropolitan areas -- Mumbai and New Delhi -- the hardest. But there are now growing signs of significant spread throughout the rest of the country as well. Indeed, India’s COVID-19 outbreak appears to be a few weeks behind that of the United States, meaning it will likely continue to ravage the subcontinent for at least several more weeks, if not months. And as it does, the contagion...

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