50 million Covid-19 cases estimated by mid-June

A medical worker observes patients inside a Covid-19 ward that was set up inside a sports stadium in New Delhi on May 2.
A medical worker observes patients inside a Covid-19 ward that was set up inside a sports stadium in New Delhi on May 2. Getty Images

India could see more than 403,000 Covid-19 total deaths and nearly 50 million total cases by June 11 this year, according to a projection model from the Indian Institute of Science.

In the event that the Indian government imposes a 15-day lockdown, India could bring the number of deaths down to fewer than 300,000 in the same time frame, and will see a total of fewer than 30 million cases since the pandemic started. That number falls further in case of a 21-day and 30-day lockdown.

A model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington from May 1 predicts more than 1 million deaths by the end of July. IHME expects 674 million people will be vaccinated by August 1, and that 91,100 lives will be saved by vaccination.

While a number of states are expected to go into “complete lockdown” in the coming days, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in April that a national lockdown should be the last resort. 

“In today’s situation, we have to save the country from lockdown. I would request states to use a lockdown as their last option. We have to try hard to avoid lockdowns and focus only on micro containment zones,” Modi said.

The Indian Institute of Science’s modeling is led by the institute’s Profs. Sashikumaar Ganesan and Deepak Subramani, and has an Indian Council of Medical Research approved mobile infection testing and reporting laboratory, a contact tracing app, a test kit and an affordable rapid test-PCR kit.

The Indian Government does not aggregate its own projection of Covid-19 in the country. 

source: cnn.com