Page 378 - ES 2020-21_Volume-1-2 [28-01-21]

State of the Economy 2020-21: A Macro View 5

SPREAD OF PANDEMIC IN INDIA
1.5 India imposed a stringent nation-wide lockdown during the initial phase of the
pandemic in March-April, 2020, followed by gradual unlocking and phasing out of the
containment measures. India crossed its peak in mid-September with 11.12 lakh active cases
on 17 September, 2020 and 97,860 daily new cases on 16th September, 2020 (Figure 4 (a)).
th
Subsequently, new cases have moved down to less than 16,000 cases per day in January,
2021 despite the festive season and onset of the winter season. The confirmed cases in India
have touched more than 1.06 crore, representing around 11 per cent of the world’s total case
load. India’s share in new cases load globally has drastically come down from 31 per cent
in September, 2020 to 4 per cent in December, 2020. The pace of spread has been controlled
with doubling time of cases rising from 12 days in May, 2020 to 249 days in December, 2020
(Figure 4 (b)).

Figure 4: Spread of COVID-19 in India
4 (a): Total Active Cases 4 (b): Doubling Time

12 Active Total Cases 25%
Daily new case growth rate (RHS) Dec 249
10 20% Nov 143
Peak in mid- 15% Oct 39 80
September
8
Active Cases (in Lakh) 6 4 10% Aug 19 27
Sep
Jul
20
Jun
May
5%
2
Apr 7 12
0 0% Mar 3
1/Apr 16/May 30/Jun 14/Aug 28/Sep 12/Nov 27/Dec 0 50 100 No of Days 200 250 300
150

Source: Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW)
Note: Doubling rate is defined as ln2/ ln (1 + r), where r is the average of last seven days of growth in cumulative cases.

1.6 The initial spread of pandemic was limited primarily to western and northern zones of
the country, which contributed 42 and 22 per cent respectively (Figure 5 (a)). On the other
hand, a sharp rise in share of Southern zone was witnessed since July, 2020 with the zone
adding more than one-third of the new cases per month on an average. The eastern and
central regions each constituted 10 per cent of the total cases respectively during the year.
All zones, barring northern region, experienced a single wave of infection till December
(Figure 5 (b)). The festive season during October and November led to a second wave of
infections in the northern region. In per capita terms, the southern zone had a maximum
caseload at 1226 cases per lakh followed by western zone at 1124 cases per lakh; the
eastern region had the lowest caseload at 342 cases per lakh as on 31 December, 2020
st
(Figure 5 (c)).