India emerged as global coronavirus hotspots after the second wave of viral disease has swept the country leaving people scrambling for medical facilities. However, India’s score on the Global Stringency Index jumped to 74 on April 30.
As per the global stringency Index, India had one of the strongest lockdown measures in the world — at a 100 score since March 22, as per the Indian Express report.
As per the data, as many as 26 states and union territories have implemented some form of restrictions in place, according to the India Today report. It means that nearly 98 percent of the population is put under some form of lockdown.
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States such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Maharashtra have implemented full lockdown, while in other places such as Gujarat, Telangana, Assam, and Himachal Pradesh, restrictions in place but not similar to a full lockdown.
What is the Global Stringency Index?
In its early phase of the covid-19 outbreak, India has implemented the toughest lockdown among all countries and it was relaxed a bit on April 20 after the norms were eased for certain workplaces in regions outside the red zones.
Developed by the University of Oxford, the Stringency Index quantifies the measures implemented to tackle the situation.
The index is one of the metrics being used by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. The Tracker comprises a team of around 100 Oxford community members who have been updating a database of 17 indicators of government response. Such indicators focus on the containment policies including school and workplace closures, public events, public transport, stay-at-home policies. Hence, this index is basically a number from 0 to 100 determining these indicators. A higher index score indicates a higher level of stringency.
As per the Oxford graph, it has been observed that the death curve has not flattened even after the strictest measures were enforced in countries such as the UK, the US, and India. As compared to countries that recorded similar or higher cases, India implemented a strict lockdown much earlier. Other 18 other countries had more than 500 cases when strictest lockdowns were enforced while India just had 320.
As per the data, Spain imposed strictest measures much later in its case and death count than all others. Sweden maintained the most liberal measures in this set, and Iran the second most liberal.