*Do Indian curries with spices, herbs and vegetarianism help fight the coronavirus..?!*
As coronavirus wrecks havoc in 70 countries around the world with over 3,000 deaths reported worldwide, India has stayed relatively unscathed. With two new cases reported today, one in the nation's capital and the other in Telangana, the total count of Indian patients has now gone up to five — a trivial tally when one considers our proximity and close business ties with China, the hotbed of the epidemic.
As East Asia and the Middle East are in the haze of the novel coronavirus epidemic, China’s neigh-boring country India declares itself infection free recently arousing many to speculate if Indians are resistant to the virus, if Indian curries have antiviral properties or India just performs well on virus prevention and control.
*No need to panic, tweets PM Modi; India suspends visas for 4 countries. PM Modi has tweeted asking people to remain calm and take small important precautions to prevent spread.*
There were only three confirmed cases of the coronavirus in India’s Kerala who studied in Wuhan, the epicenter. They were recently discharged from hospital after recovery, meaning India is now in-fection free, Indian media Hindustan Times reported.
The latest data by the World Health Organization also shows India had no new confirmed cases as of Saturday, excluding the previous three reported patients who became infected while in China.
The zero confirmed cases in India, a country of 1.38 billion, aroused the interest of Chinese netizens to find out why. A story circulating on Chinese media joked that "Indian food and climate make it diffi-cult for people to catch epidemic diseases,” or “poor sanitation in India is what keeps India immune” went viral on Sunday.
Experts and residents from India dismissed popular speculations, saying the good epidemic situation in India is due to the rapid and strict response from its government as a nation with limited medical resources, while saying that if it had a similar outbreak to Wuhan, it would not be able to stand the onslaught of infection.
When the first three confirmed cases were found, the local Kerala state government declared an emergency and prolonged the quarantine period of 14 days to 28 as a precautionary measure. Thousands of people were subsequently under observation in their homes, which is "a very timely and strong measure to curb the virus from a local government level," Xie Chao, an expert at Tsing-hua University's Department of International Relations, told the Global Times.
"The Indian government acknowledges its limited public medical resources would pose a danger to the whole country, and may cause a national disaster if the virus is not properly controlled,” said Zhao Gancheng, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
It remains uncertain whether the data regarding the COVID-19 infections in India are accurate and observers said there could be omissions and concealments given the potentially inadequate statisti-cal methods and diagnostic techniques.
Harman, a resident from Delhi, also told the Global Times Sunday that it would be very difficult for Indians to handle such an epidemic outbreak, especially lower class people who have no access to good medical resources. Harman said he is worried about the situation in India would deteriorate as the Indian government doesn’t seem very concerned and the general public is not wearing masks either.
Zhao said it was maybe just a coincidence that India performed well in this outbreak as the virus mainly targets middle-aged people, but not the young. Despite this, large quantities of Indian nation-als from Wuhan are young students.
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