With the country reporting the highest number of COVID-19 cases in a single day at 3900 cases, Niti Aayog feels that rise in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus is expected to stabilize anytime soon. And the government's decision to extend lockdown by two more weeks after May 3 is to consolidate gains of the first and second phase of restrictions.

Niti Aayog member V K Paul said, "The rationale behind extending lockdown till May 17 is that the gains of lockdown need to be consolidated. Real goal of lockdown was to suppress the chain of transmission of the virus. So, we will lose that, if we abruptly end it."

As head of an Empowered Group on medical equipment and management plan to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, he feels that where the situation is good, the opening will take place with caution and care. "Essentially, we think it continuous rise in coronavirus cases is still amenable to containment strategy," he said.

India is nowhere close to the kind of escalation of coronavirus cases that it witnessed during the pre-lockdown phase. In the pre-lockdown stage, doubling of number of cases was in every five days. Before that even at every 3 days. Now, it is in 11-12 days. So, overall the rate of spread has diminished but yes the number still has not stabilized. But it is expected to be stabilized anytime soon.