AP Explains: India scrambles to curb virus after late start

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown on Tuesday to head off the epidemic's peak, with officials racing to make up for lost time as the caseload crossed 10,000.

Modi ordered India's 1.3 billion people to continue to largely stay inside until May 3, but said some restrictions away from infection hotspots would be eased on April 20 to help poor people dependent upon daily wages.

India has a long history of battling infectious disease, from a 19th century malaria epidemic to the Nipah virus outbreak in 2018. But experts have said these experiences — and the monthslong head start India had while neighboring China contended with the coronavirus — were squandered.

A look at why India was forced to take such severe measures to curb the spread of the disease and what it achieved in the first 21 days of the lockdown:

___

DELAYS AND DENIALS

India's first coronavirus meeting took place Jan. 8, and its first case was detected Jan. 30. But it wasn’t until the World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic on March 12 that the government’s response kicked into gear.

The Indian Council for Medical Research, or ICMR, the government’s top research body, said mitigation was the solution to keeping the virus’ spread in check. It released a mathematical model in February that suggested that the government was relying too heavily on screening incoming travelers. It recommended testing for asymptomatic cases and implementing strict social isolation. The expert advice was ignored for weeks.

Moreover, screening wasn't uniform, said Dr. T. Jacob John, a leading Indian epidemiologist.

Even as people tested positive in distant corners of India, far removed from foreign travelers, Indian officials...