Maintain social distancing, next 3 weeks crucial for India to break chain of COVID-19: ICMR

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for complete lockdown for 21 days amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, scientists at Indian Council Medical Research (ICMR) said that the next three weeks are crucial for India to combat the spread of the virus.

ICMR said that social distancing is very important to fight against coronavirus.

The Prime Minister said that social distancing is the only safe option to curb coronavirus disease and hence it is important to stay inside your houses and stay at a distance from each other.

According to ICMR, India has reported about 536 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 and 10 deaths till date. The experts at the apex medical research body said that it is very important to break the chain of the virus to contain the spread of infection.

"If people would follow the implementation of lockdown and maintain social distancing, then we would be able to break the chain of the virus. The existing infections would be identified and people can be treated," Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, a scientist at ICMR told ANI.

"Also infection would not multiply. This will help to break the COVID19 chain and flatten the curve of the disease outbreak," he said.

Most importantly, social distancing should also be followed among family members, he added.

It is important to note that a study done by ICMR using a simple mathematical model of infectious disease transmission has revealed that that home quarantine of symptomatic can reduce the overall expected number of cases by 62 per cent and the peak number of cases by 89 per cent.