MUMBAI, INDIA—Until last week, Shivaji Park was brimming with people almost every night. One of this city’s largest public grounds, it was often packed with cricket teams, joggers, school children, and elderly walkers—along with an entire informal economy of street vendors.
All vanished after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the world’s largest lockdown on 24 March, asking 1.3 billion Indians to stay home for 21 days to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The move was partly a response to apocalyptic projections. Fewer than 600 cases had been confirmed at the time of Modi’s announcement, although that number is widely believed to be an undercount. But without control measures, 300 million to 500 million Indians could be infected by the end of July and 30 million to 50 million could have severe disease, according to one model. And the world’s second most populous country has large numbers of poor living in crowded, unsanitary conditions and a weak public health infrastructure, with just 0.7 hospital beds per 1000 persons, compared with Italy’s 3.4 and the United States’s 2.9; India also has fewer than 50,000 ventilators.
