Why India so far seems to staved off the coronavirus

temperature check Chennai, India.
(Image credit: ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

The jury is still out on whether the world's second most populous nation can hold off the coronavirus pandemic, but so far at least, India has kept things at bay, The New York Times reports.

"I have been quite impressed with India," Dr. Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization representative in India, said. "From the onset they've been taking it very seriously."

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At the same time, experts worry the number of cases is actually much higher because of limited testing, and not everyone is sure the government responded in a timely fashion, especially because people are still out and about in major cities like New Delhi. "The challenge of a large country like India with overcrowding is that some people will always slip the net, wherever you put it," said Dipanjan Roy, an Indian epidemiologist, who added that not putting harsher quarantines into effect even earlier may have cost the country.

Still, some experts are hopeful that India has a few other advantages up its sleeve, including the normally-frowned-upon prevalence of antibiotics dispensed without a prescription, the country's youthful demographics, increased testing, and the unproven possibility of warm weather halting the virus. Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.