With almost every state stepping up the curbs to control the spread of the coronavirus, India’s score on the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker’s stringency index has risen in recent days. After months of decline, the score is now back to the level of January 1, 2021.
Developed by Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, the Stringency Index is a “composite metric based on nine response indicators, including school closings, job closings and travel bans that have been rescaled from 0 to 100”. The tracker collects data from 180 countries and is updated twice a week.
India’s score increased from 57.87 (March 9, 2021 – April 2, 2021) to 74.54 on April 3. It then fell slightly over the next few days, hovering around the 70 mark, and stayed at 69.91 from April 5th. On April 10, India was ranked 32nd out of 102 countries for which data were available as of April 17, with a score of 69.91.
While countries such as Canada, France, Brazil (data available until March 19) and China have higher values for the stringency index, the most affected USA are well below India at 56.94. Australia (46.76) and Russia (36.57) are among the larger countries with dots on the lower side. The five countries with the highest index values for the stringency index as of April 10th are Mauritius (96.3), Greece (87.96), Mongolia (87.96), Venezuela (87.96) and Eritrea (85.19) .
The Index Developer notes that “Indices merely measure the number and rigor of government policies and should not be interpreted as an” assessment “of the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response. A higher position in an index does not necessarily mean that a country’s answer is “. better ‘than others who are lower in the index “.
India’s score was 100 on the Stringency Index from March 25 to April 19 last year. It was the time when the center imposed a nationwide lockdown to contain the pandemic. Other major countries with higher scores on March 25, 2020 were China (79.17), United Kingdom (79.63), Germany (76.85), the United States (72.69), and Brazil (71.76).
Data shows that as of the first week of January 2021, while most of the big countries had stricter guidelines, India’s score was way below that of Germany, the UK, China and the US. In the case of China, however, the restrictions have been at an elevated level since December 2020, while in the case of the US and the UK they have declined steadily since January.
But is India approaching a full lockdown in the face of soaring cases, as seen in the first half of 2020? That is the question everyone is asking.
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