"The lockdown and containment measures are important to fight COVID-19. If we had not taken any measures, then we might have had 8.2 lakh cases by April 15," said Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry, during the daily media briefing here.
He also said that the estimation is a result of the statistical analysis and is not an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study.
"It is a statistical rate of growth based analysis. It is not an ICMR study. Before the nationwide lockdown, the rate of growth in cases was 28.9 per cent," said Aggarwal.
( With inputs from ANI )