The BJP on Tuesday claimed the Narendra Modi government’s “extraordinary proactiveness” had helped contain the spread of the coronavirus in the country even as figures showed a sharp rise in cases amid fears of an explosion of numbers in some pockets.

“While many countries are in the devastating grip of the COVID-19 menace, India has managed to maintain a flat curve so far by containing the transmission of the virus,” the party’s official Twitter handle @BJP4India tweeted.

“It’s possible because of the extraordinary proactiveness of the Modi govt,” the tweet added, attaching a graphic video of various decisions the government has taken in the fight against the pandemic.

The self-congratulatory post came on Day 7 of the 21-day countrywide lockdown Modi had announced on March 24 evening but was far removed from facts.

The claim came in the backdrop of the sharpest rise in 24 hours in new cases in the country, according to figures the government had released on Monday.

The number of people who tested positive for the disease rose by 227 to 1,251 on Monday evening amid concerns over a further spike with Nizamuddin, in Delhi, emerging as a possible centre of a cluster outbreak.

The Delhi government on Tuesday claimed that as many as 441 people who had attended a religious congregation at Nizamuddin earlier this month had shown Covid-19 symptoms.

Although India’s Covid-19 graph has so far been better compared with the US and some European countries, experts feel it is too early to claim the spread of the virus has been contained.

The graphic video attached to the tweet claimed the Modi government had begun its battle to contain the virus ever since China announced the outbreak on January 7.

The video claimed that India held its first “mission meeting” the very next day, January 8; started screening passengers from China on January 17 and that the Prime Minister’s principal secretary had held a review meeting on January 25.

The opposition Congress, however, accused the Modi government of wasting the whole of February doing nothing substantial to prepare for the crisis.

While passengers from China were screened, there was no check for those coming from the US and European nations despite reports of Covid-19 outbreak in many of these countries.

The Congress has said that India is testing too few people. At 29 tests per million, the country is way behind even Pakistan (67 per million) and Sri Lanka (97 per million) and nowhere near South Korea, which had the best record at 7622 per million, the party said.