LAUSR

Given its vast population of 1.35 billion people and being the second most populous country in the world, there was a nervous expectation that India would be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and the health system would be unable to cope with this surge. Therefore, India was viewed by the world with concerns about containment strategies, and the ability to cope in preventing and managing COVID-19. At the time of writing (12 May 2020), India reported 70 827 cases of COVID-19 and 2294 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on 12 January 2020 that a novel coronavirus was the cause of respiratory illness in Wuhan city, China. Since then, the disease has been declared a pandemic and has spread unabated, particularly in the global north. India reported its first case of COVID-19 on 30 January. No significant spread was observed in February. However, on 4 March, 22 new cases were diagnosed mainly among an Italian tourist group. The transmission escalated from then and spread across the entire Indian subcontinent, with most cases linked to people with a travel history from affected countries. On 12 March, a 76-year-old man who returned from Saudi Arabia became the first fatality. Since then, the spread of the infection has continued at a variable pace in all the Indian states, with no area of the country spared. The largest concentration of cases has been in the metropolitan cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Chennai.