Jayeeta Rajagopalan, Saadiya Hurzuk, Faheem Arshad, Premkumar Raja and Suvarna Alladi

Key findings:

• While there are a large number of elderly people with comorbidities in India, there is a limited data available on the proportion with long-term care needs.
• There is no formal or organized long-term care system in the country. Long-term care is community based, with families primarily providing care.
• The numbers of positive cases of COVID 19 in India have risen significantly since the first case was reported on January 30^th 2020. As of 30^th May 2020, there are 86,422 active cases, 82,369 cured cases and 4,971 deaths. There is no data on the prevalence of COVID-19 among people with long-term care needs or number of deaths.
• The government has introduced several population level measures to contain the spread of COVID-19. These include: a nationwide lockdown to encourage physical distancing, establishing centres for COVID-19 testing, creating dedicated facilities for treatment, an app to facilitate contact tracing and guidelines/advisories for older people and people with disabilities.
• Care homes are largely unregulated and there is limited data available on their activities. As a result, it is difficult to determine the extent to which infection protocol measures have been adopted by all care homes in the country.
• There are no government guidelines directed specifically towards unpaid carers and people with dementia during the pandemic (as of May 30^th 2020).