India was in crisis months ago. Why have its Covid cases plummeted?

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(CNN)Six months ago, India was in crisis. Critically ill Covid-19 patients were being turned away from hospitals. Doctors were collapsing from exhaustion. And the virus was spreading through crowded slums, home to millions of the country's poorest people.

Today, the country looks very different. Daily new cases have plummeted, dropping from a peak of over 90,000 infections in September down to just over 10,000 a day in February. On February 9, the capital Delhi reported zero virus deaths for the first time in nearly nine months, according to COVID19INDIA, a website that crowdsources Covid-19 data from official sources.

This has all happened without drastic measures such as circuit-breaker lockdowns, which have been used in places like New Zealand and Australia to get outbreaks under control. The Indian government is still implementing certain social distancing restrictions and has scrambled to assist overstretched hospitals -- but the economy has reopened, domestic travel has resumed, and people are largely going about their daily lives.


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