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Saving Lives and Livelihoods Amidst a Once-in-a-Century Crisis 17

identified – places with higher confirmed cases increasing the prospect of contagion. This
strategy was increasingly adopted for intensive interventions at the local level as the national
lockdown was eased. This enabled a smooth transition to ‘Jaan bhi aur Jahan bhi’.
1.28 The analysis in the chapter makes it evident that India was successful in flattening the
pandemic curve, pushing the peak to September. India managed to save millions of ‘lives’ and
outperform pessimistic expectations in terms of cases and deaths. It is the only country other
than Argentina that has not experienced a second wave. It has among the lowest fatality rates
despite having the second largest number of confirmed cases. The recovery rate has been almost
96 per cent. India, therefore, seems to have managed the health aspect of COVID-19 well.

EFFICACY OF INITIAL LOCKDOWN IN CONTROLLING THE
PANDEMIC

1.29 COVID-19 prompted a wide range of responses from governments around the world. The
Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), provides a systematic way to track
government responses to COVID-19 across countries. Common lockdowns used included school
closings, travel restrictions, bans on public gatherings, emergency investments in healthcare
facilities, new forms of social welfare provision, contact tracing, wide scale testing and other
interventions to contain the spread of the virus, augment health systems, and manage the economic
consequences of these actions. However, government policy responses have varied substantially—
both across countries, and often within countries—in the measures that they have adopted and how
quickly they have adopted them. As is evident from Figure 11, the policy response in top major
five affected countries varied over time. India imposed the most stringent lockdown (equal to 100
as per the index) for around a period of forty days from late March to early May – this was when
it had total cases of only around 500-600 cases. As a comparison, stringency in US was around 72
only during that period when it already had 1 lakh cases. As on date, India has a declining trend in
daily new cases which has dropped below 20,000 and lowest CFR despite having second largest
number of total cases. US is still seeing around 2 lakh daily new cases.

Figure 11: Variations in Stringency of Lockdowns in Top 5 Countries

Source: Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker – data as on 31 December, 2020
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