Coronavirus pandemic: What India can learn from China and Italy?

China and Italy are at two ends of the spectrum right now. While Italy's death toll continues to surge, China has reported zero local coronavirus cases for the third day running.

What is common between both counties is that Italy and China both have used lockdown measured to curb the rapidly spreading coronavirus infections.

Let's talk about China first.

The entire province of Hubei was locked down by late January. The epicentre of coronavirus was completely shut-off from the rest of China an of the infections were reported within Hubei.

There were comparatively fewer fatalities in other regions of China.

So China was essentially able to isolate the virus.

In Italy, we saw something very different.

The first cases were reported in the Lodi province in Lombardy. But, the European country was slow in bringing the lockdown measures in effect which resulted in virus spreading across Italy.

Right now, the worst-affected province in Italy is not Lodi, but Bergamo. The Lodi province, in fact, has only half as many cases as Bergamo.

The takeaway here is the timing.

Italy with 60 million people has surpassed China's death toll now.
But had Italy imposed social distancing measures immediately after the first case was reported, things could have been different.

Now, what can India learn from these findings?

Having a young population is definitely an advantage because the millennials have a higher recovery rate. But, social distancing is an important factor in the battle against the pandemic.

In India, so far, four people have succumbed to the coronavirus while over 250 people have been infected.

If restrictive measures are not imposed at the right time, India might lose the chance to flatten the curve.