Effective Lockdown and Role of Hospital-Based COVID-19 Transmission in Some Indian States: An Outbreak Risk Analysis.

Abstract

Several reports in India indicate hospitals and quarantined centers are COVID‐19 hotspots. To study the transmission occurring from the hospitals and as well as from the community, we developed a mechanistic model with a lockdown effect. Using daily COVID‐19 cases data from six states and overall India, we estimated several important parameters of our model. Moreover, we provided an estimation of the effective (RT ), the basic (R 0), the community (R C), and the hospital (R H) reproduction numbers. We forecast COVID‐19 notified cases from May 3, 2020, till May 20, 2020, under five different lockdown scenarios in the seven locations. Our analysis suggests that 65% to 99% of the new COVID‐19 cases are currently asymptomatic in those locations. Besides, about 1–16% of the total COVID‐19 transmission are currently occurring from hospital‐based contact and these percentage can increase up to 69% in some locations. Furthermore, the hospital‐based transmission rate (β2 ) has significant positive (0.65 to 0.8) and negative (‐0.58 to ‐0.23) correlation with R 0 and the effectiveness of lockdown, respectively. Therefore, a much larger COVID‐19 outbreak may trigger from the hospital‐based transmission. In most of the locations, model forecast from May 3, 2020, till May 20, 2020, indicates a two‐times increase in cumulative cases in comparison to total observed cases up to April 29, 2020. Based on our results, we proposed a containment policy that may reduce the threat of a larger COVID‐19 outbreak in the future.