Highest overnight spike in national count ...The Union health ministry had up to 5pm recorded 723 deaths, including 37 over the past day

Medics screen police personnel for Covid-19 at Jahangirpuri, during the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, in New Delhi, Friday, April 24, 2020. Forty-six people tested positive for the novel coronavirus in North Delhis Jahangirpuri yesterday. (PTI)

TT, 25.04.20, New Delhi: India’s Covid-19 counts increased by 1,752 on Friday, the highest overnight spike so far, to 23,452 patients and experts cautioned that the country’s true infection burden remains unknown and vast, but officials claimed the lockdown has been “effective”.

The Union health ministry had up to 5pm recorded 723 deaths, including 37 over the past day.

However, health officials said the lockdown and other social distancing measures adopted by India has slowed down the spread of the virus. In a presentation to reporters, Vinod Paul, a member of a national task force guiding the government on Covid-19 said the doubling time of infections in the country has lengthened.

The doubling time of Covid-19 counts in the country has increased from 5 days in the last week of March to six days between April 7 and 13, and nine days between April 14 and 20. Without the lockdown, Paul said, the country could have had over 100,000 Covid-19 cases and not around 23,000.

“The lockdown was timely — it has been effective, it has saved lives,” Paul said. Health ministry and other officials have also earlier presented similar data illustrating the gains from the lockdown by slowing the infection spread.

But health experts said a slowdown in the spread of the virus and thus a “flattening” of the infection growth curves would only be expected in the absence of travel within cities, across states and no influx of international travellers.

The Centre’s repeated assertions of the country’s gains from the lockdown, some experts believe, represent efforts by the government to repel criticism that the lockdown was imposed without adequate planning and has caused severe hardship to countless people.

“The lockdown was necessary but could have been planned and implemented in a much better manner,” said a senior public health expert who requested not to be named.

Others point out that the slowdown has in no way reduced the challenge ahead for India. “You can look at some data selectively and use that to show the lockdown has helped, but there are other worrying numbers,” said T. Jacob John, a clinical virologist and emeritus professor at the Christian Medical College, Vellore.

Multiple states still have large outbreaks. Maharashtra, which had around 4,500 Covid-19 patients in hospital on Thursday, added 778 patients over the past day. Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh also each have more than 1,000 Covid-19 patients in hospital.

John and others have earlier pointed out that India’s testing policy is still restricted. Only people who have had contact with positive cases, healthcare workers with symptoms and patients with influenza-like illness qualify for testing in parts of the country that are not containment zones in Covid-19 hotspots. In hotspots, all people with symptoms are being asked to seek testing.

“However, this is still selective testing -– you don’t get a national burden through such a process,” John said. “So the 23,000-odd cases are not the true burden. Instead, deaths are more likely to reflect the true burden of infection. If we take the mortality to be one per cent, our 700-odd deaths today would translate into more than 70,000 infections.”