Covid-19: How tight are the restrictions in major economies?

Seven largest economies are now seeing a median increase in cases from a decline earlier

India has more relaxed Covid-19 restrictions than most of the world’s major economies.

It ranks sixth among the seven largest economies based on the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford). The index measures the strictness and number of government policies.  The latest available data for each country was collected from tracker Our World in Data.  Germany was among the ones which has seen the sharpest increase in stringency since the time around November 25th. This is when the new variant was announced to the world.

Germany has detected cases of the Omicron Covid-19 variant in the country. It introduced new restrictions on Thursday. The United States of America, China, Germany, United Kingdom and France are the other countries which have a higher stringency index score than India as of the latest available data. They along with Japan and India are the seven largest economies, shows World Bank data.  Japan (44.44) scores marginally lower than India (45.83).

The initial lockdown period had India score 100 on the stringency index. It is based on nine response indicators including whether schools and workplaces have been shut, and any travel bans that might be in place. If there are variations within the country, the region with the strictest policies are used. The website adds that the index just measures strictness of the policies and not whether they are appropriate or effective in dealing with the situation at hand.

There also appears to be a definite shift in the way that the growth in Covid-19 cases has changed over the last one week. The total number of cases detected in a week had been falling as of November 25th. The median rate of change in cases detected for the seven was -11.1 per cent then. A week later it is showing a trend reversal. More cases are being detected in a given week than the previous week. The median growth rate for the seven largest economies is now 2.5 per cent as of 2nd December.

The sharpest change has been for China where cases have more than doubled. The growth in cases had been slowing down in France and Germany. Both recently detected their first cases of the fast-spreading Omicron variant. Japan and the United Kingdom, where growth had been slowing, have also detected their first cases. India’s weekly change in confirmed cases was -12.8 per cent in on November 25. The decline in cases has now slowed to -8.3 per cent. China and the United States are the two outliers in terms of falling cases having turned into a surge over the week. It has reportedly been detected in five states in the US.

Scientists are still debating the severity of the threat from the new variant.

“It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta,”  according to a note on the website of the World Health Organisation.  

“Preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, but this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of specific infection with Omicron,” it added.