The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Saturday lauded India’s handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak. A systematic nationwide lockdown and an equally organised phase to revive commercial activities also found praise from the global nodal health agency.

India’s efforts to ramp up testing and set up more diagnostic facilities are appreciated, the WHO said. It further pointed out that “population” is the biggest challenge in India’s fight against Covid-19 along with geographic diversity and heterogeneity, adding that most Indian states witnessing more than one epidemic at the same time is also a challenge.

Chief Scientist at the WHO, Dr Soumya Swaminathan said in an interview to news agency ANI that India is now doing more than 2 lakh tests each day. She further added that the Government of India took the pandemic seriously and implemented preventative measures as early as January of this year.

Swaminathan also praised India’s bid to develop indigenous testing kits.

She, however, added that India should focus more on a systematic approach to looking at the data. Examining the total number of cases and casualties gives only a part of the story, Swaminathan said.

India needs national guidelines on reporting data, otherwise, comparisons cannot be made because everybody is reporting in different ways, the WHO’s Chief Scientist added. She went further to say that the first thing to know is the epidemiology of the disease. For this purpose, it is essential to figure out the number of cases per million-population across states.

Dr Swaminathan said that merely reporting cases will not be sufficient and it is key to know the test positivity rate which should ideally be under 5 per cent. She also said that if contacts of Covid-19 patients are not traced within 48 to 72 hours, the exercise will not do any good.

Each state in India should adhere to a dashboard of criteria and compare data to strengthen healthcare infrastructure and deal effectively with the novel coronavirus which is not going away anytime soon, Dr Soumya Swaminathan told the news agency.