India’s efforts in containing the highly contagious Wuhan coronavirus is getting widespread praise with some people in West simply cannot believe how a country of India’s size with over 1.3 billion people is doing much better than the developed countries like the USA and the UK. India is now the recipient of surprise praise from China’s top infectious disease expert as he claimed that infection in India will not increase more than 10 per cent.
Chinese embassy arranged a video interaction of Zhang Wenhong, China’s top infectious disease expert with the Chinese students in India where Wenhong claimed that the people of India are mentally immune to the virus.
“I once saw on news a religious gathering in India where people were not wearing masks. It’s not like Indians are physically immune to Covid-19, they are mentally immune. The Indians have their peaceful mind,” said Wenhong.
Wenhong who is the director of Huashan Hospital’s Department of Infectious Disease in Shanghai, also added that while India’s virus cases are rising, its position is far better than that of the USA.
“We are seeing an increase in terms of number of confirmed cases in India. Right now, the number of confirmed cases in India is increasing, but India has a larger population than the United States so the infection rate is actually lower than India,” said Wenhong. He also claimed that India’s infection cases will not increase more than 10% as he assured the Chinese students that 90% of people around them are free of the virus.
Anyone who has followed the virus since it was first reported in China knows that countries like Taiwan, the USA and India were among the quickest to react by restricting travel to and fro from China despite the WHO’s wrong assertion that there is no need to restrict flights from China.
On January 31, a day after India’s first case was reported, the government advised all the airlines to suspend their flight to China. On February 4, India stopped E-Visas for Chinese nationals. Patients and any contacts of the patients who came later were being quarantined.
Continuing with their proactiveness, the government made the difficult decision to call for a ‘Janta Curfew’ on March 22 and then a 21-day complete lockdown in order the prevent the disease from blowing up. An emerging economy like India with 1.3 billion people decided on a complete and largely successful lockdown even when the number of cases is relatively low and pressure on hospitals infrastructure has not been witnessed yet.
Despite the rising number of cases, India’s death rate and the no. of cases have been pretty low compared to other nations. However, India has still a long battle to fight as it seeks to flatten the curve.