Why the densely populated South Asia is less affected by COVID19?

Cases in South Asia are far less affected by COVID19 than the rest of the world. In this type of situation, governments have to take tough decisions; same as taken by the government of Pakistan. They closed all schools, colleges and universities. Besides this, all educational institutions and all the public events got cancelled including the ongoing PSL matches and the IPL as well.

Government has been criticized by the masses and people including the opposition parties didn’t support the decision. The speculation about the cases was high. It was believed by the government that cases may reach up to 50,000 till 25^th of April 2020. But it happened other way around, despite the partial lockdown, cases increased with a minimum level. It has reached to nearly 14,000 cases so far which is 72 percent lower than expected. And the death rate is 2%, almost 3% lower as compared to United States of America where it is more than 5%.  Thus, the factor brought the attention of the people to find out the reason why this region is less affected by COVID19.

Same is the situation in other densely populated South Asian countries, Like in India, total cases so far are 29451 and death rate is 3.2%, slightly higher than Pakistan but even less affected by COVID19 comparing to the rest of the world. In other South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives, the cases are lower as compare to other top economies of the world. As of April 27, the total number of cases in the world are 3,055,651, including 1,004,942 in USA, 229,422 in Spain, 199,414 in Italy, 165,842 in France, 158,389 and 157,249 are in Germany and UK respectively. This shows the number of cases in these countries is several times higher than the other parts of the world. 32% of total cases are in America alone, and if we combine these 6 countries, they contribute 57% of the cases in total.