India's measures seeking fine balance between virus control and livelihoods

India has stepped up testing in states with rising numbers of coronavirus infections as it seeks to contain the spread while opening up more sectors of the economy.

In tandem with that strategy, the country is continuing with a policy of guided home isolation for those testing positive without symptoms.

The country reported 45,720 new cases for the latest 24-hour period, the health authorities said on Thursday. India had recorded 1.24 million cases overall, behind only the United States and Brazil. The addition of 1,129 deaths took its total to 28,732. The country now ranks seventh globally in fatalities.

The death rate is relatively low, aided in part by a young population. But fatalities are gaining momentum and India is rapidly closing in on the tallies posted by European former hot spots France and Italy.

While the authorities point out that the death rate per 10,000 people is just 0.15, compared with 3.97 in the US and 6.65 in the United Kingdom, government officials and experts have called for measures to contain the pandemic in the second most-populous country.

The federal health ministry said the prevalence of COVID-19 in the country and that the opening up of more sectors of the economy poses a further challenge to control efforts.

India conducts an average of 300,000 tests a day, with 19 million logged so far. Delhi, once a hot spot, is now reporting fewer than 1,000 cases a day, but many states are struggling.

The western state of Maharashtra has been reporting around 8,000 cases over the past five days. With 318,695 infections reported, it has the most of any state.

"Aggressive testing is necessary to bring down the national COVID-19 positivity rate. The aim is to maintain this level of testing to bring down the positivity rate to below 5 percent," said Rajesh Bhushan, an official at the federal health ministry.

The national positivity rate from COVID-19 tests is 6.73 percent. The rate can provide insights into whether enough tests are being done in a particular area or in a community.

Coordination mechanism

"In a vast country such as India, we learn a lot of things about fighting the pandemic over a period of time," said Amar Bodhi, a doctor who has been on the frontlines of the coronavirus battle in the Delhi region since April.

"This includes arriving at the best coordination mechanism among multiple administrative agencies, sensitizing people and ensuring that we don't deviate from the basic protocols of test, trace and treat.

"The home isolation of asymptomatic patients is proving to be an ideal way to deal with the situation considering the huge stress a pandemic brings to the modest healthcare infrastructure in many parts of the country."

India had used lockdowns as a containment strategy. But the need to balance efforts against the pandemic with the necessity of letting people earn a livelihood has forced a rethink on lockdowns by some provincial administrations.

After announcing a week-long lockdown from July 14 in Bengaluru－home to India's big information technology companies－to check an increase in virus cases, B.S. Yediyurappa, the chief minister of Karnataka state, said on Tuesday that "lockdown is not a solution". The focus should be on "the economy and to help rebuild livelihoods", he said.

Global Economic Prospects, a report by the World Bank released last week, predicts that India's economy will contract by 3.2 percent in 2020-21. It grew 4.2 percent in 2019-20, the slowest pace in 11 years.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Delhi.