International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | April 2021 | Vol 9 | Issue 4 Page 1228 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Mangla AG et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2021 Apr;9(4):1228-1233 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Review Article India seems to outperform in handling COVID-19 pandemic Anita Garg Mangla, Shreya Kandpal, Parthvi Mahendru, Neeru Dhamija* INTRODUCTION The world is currently facing a coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 (formerly known as SARS-CoV-2), coronavirus disease 2019 by WHO. COVID-19, beginning in the Wuhan province of China in mid-November 2019, started to spread across other countries. By 13 January 2020, the first case of the novel corona-virus (COVID-19) was reported outside China, in Thailand and then in Japan and South Korea. 1 This was an alarm for other countries to take preventive measures as the number of cases in China and other countries started to increase at a rapid rate. By 23 January 2020, more than 550 people got infected in many countries. Due to sudden spurt in the number of cases, reaching thousands in a single day, WHO declared this as a global health emergency on 30 January 2020. 2 It was declared a pandemic by WHO on 11 March 2020. 1 Initial measures taken in India to contain the pandemic The first COVID-19 case in Kerala state of India was reported on 30 January 2020 of a student who had returned from Wuhan China. 2 There was not very significant rise in the COVID-19 cases in India till first week of March, but the number of reported cases crossed 100 till 15 March 2020. Countries like India and US started screening people in February (for temperature and any symptoms of cough or cold) travelling from China and later those travelling from other countries too and asked them to home quarantine for 14 days. These measures by the government were not enough because during the incubation time of the virus the person shows no significant symptoms thus tends to be an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. Due to air-to- air transmission and longer incubation period of the virus, it spread across nations making it urgent for all countries to take up sudden and strict actions to stop its spread. As the virus was seen to be highly contagious in countries like Italy and USA, where population is less and healthcare facilities are better than that of India, the government of India was forced to take strict measures to contain the further spread of the virus. After the detection of the first case, Indian government started to spread awareness amongst people through advertisements on social distancing, usage of masks and hand-washing to avoid the contact of virus. Additionally, Aarogya Setu app was launched on 2 April 2020 promoted by the Ministry of DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20211384 Department of Biochemistry, Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India Received: 02 March 2021 Revised: 11 March 2021 Accepted: 12 March 2021 *Correspondence: Dr. Neeru Dhamija, E-mail: neerudhamija83@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT The coronavirus pandemic is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). The outbreak was first identified in Wuhan, China and soon within months it engulfed more than 188 countries. As of 25 January 2020, more than 100 million cases have been reported globally. Worst affected countries globally include USA, India, Brazil, Russian, UK, France, Turkey, Italy, Spain and Germany. By far India has taken robust immediate measures to contain the spread of virus by implementing stringent nationwide lockdowns at an early stage. This review focuses on how India, in several ways, is placed better in handling COVID-19 than the developed countries. Keywords: COVID-19, India, WHO, Test