© IEEE 2021. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IN INDIA- Flattening the Curve and Raising the Line Narayana Darapaneni Director - AIML Great Learning/Northwestern University Illinois, USA darapaneni@gmail.com Kappilan Chelvarajan Student - AIML Great Learning Chennai, India kappilan@gmail.com Balamanikandan Maheswaran Student - AIML Great Learning Chennai, India mbalamanikandan@gmail.com Arun Prasad V.S Student - AIML Great Learning Chennai, India arun123prasad.vs@gmail.com Kartikeyan S Student - AIML Great Learning Chennai, India s.kartikeyan88@gmail.com Surya Narayani V Student - AIML Great Learning Chennai, India suryanarayani99@gmail.com Anwesh Reddy Paduri Research Assistant - AIML Great Learning Mumbai, India anwesh@greatlearning.in Abstract— This paper evaluates the data of the Covid-19 infected, recovered, and death cases, as well as the data of the hospital beds, ICU unit occupancies from 14 March 2020 to 7 August 2020 for the top 5 affected the Indian States. The modified SEIR model used here assesses the effectiveness of the measures taken by the Government in containing the virus spread by varying the basic reproduction number for every 20 days following the first 40 days based on the containment measures taken by the Government and reverse calculating the other SEIR parameters. The result confirms that the measures have helped to contain the virus spread in meeting the health care capacity line in states like Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. States like Andhra Pradesh need further containment actions and increased health care capacities if the current trend continues. Keywords - COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, Social distancing, Lockdown, SEIR models I. INTRODUCTION COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which is believed to have originated from Wuhan, China, and effectively spread to more than 199 countries and territories, most of the countries showed a similar pattern of spread, at least in the first phase, of this pandemic [1]. These transmissions occur mainly through inhalation or contact with infected droplets. The incubation period may range from 2 to 14 days [2]. The fatality rate is approximated to range from 2 to 3% but the demographic trend is towards the older population (about 27% for 60+ age groups) and those with pre-existing medical ailments [3]. The first case of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in India was reported on 30 January 2020 [4] in a student who returned from Wuhan, China. The number of infections started to rise after the first case and was reported with 1,251 cases on 30 March 2020, among which there were 1,117 active cases, 102 recovered cases, and 32 deaths [5], [6]. Though the nation was not prepared the infection rate was slightly in favor of the nation due to various factors like warmer climate as well as humidity [7], [8], the majority of the people being young, and because of the acquired immunity through BCG vaccinations [9] but there was no conclusive evidence to support these studies [10]. Post the preliminary studies the current reported cases are 36, 91,183 among which there are 7, 85,220 active cases, 28, 39,923 recovered cases, and 65,452 deaths as of 1 September 2020[11]. India went into strict lockdown from 22 March - 14 April 2020 for 21 days [lockdown 1.0] followed by an extension till 4 May 2020 with little relaxation based on the containment zones, during lockdown 1.0, the average daily reported new cases were less than 600 and 1420 during lockdown 2.0. Though the reported smaller numbers could be because of strict measures taken during the lockdown, it could also be because of the less number of tests per day as tests were done only to limited people. This is unlike the strategy followed in China and South Korea where testing was done for the entire population of hotspots and the curve was flattened almost immediately [12], [16]. There was a lot of relaxation during lockdown 3.0 [4 May - 17 May 2020] and lockdown 4.0 [18 May - 31 May 2020] and even more relaxation post 1st June 2020. As expected to the line of increase in relaxations, the daily average cases reported also increased drastically to 8000 per day during these 40 days. Though the number of cases increased the actual number should have been higher if the actual reproduction number R0 2020 IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applied Network Technologies (ICMLANT) | 978-1-7281-8885-0/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICMLANT50963.2020.9355981