The Indian government claimed initial success in its fight against the coronavirus epidemic, saying it would have been hit with 820,000 cases by next week had it not imposed a nationwide lockdown, Reuters reports.
“We would have gone the Italian way, had we not done the lockdown,” Foreign Ministry additional secretary Vikas Swarup told reporters.
India, he said, began screening people coming from overseas a fortnight before the first positive case surfaced on January 30.
