India has seen 70,182new cases of Covid-19 on average every day in the week ended Monday.
That works out to 5.3 cases per 100,000 people (assuming India’s population at 1.3 billion).
One way of looking at the Covid-19 challenge is to target reducing the number of new cases to
less than one per 100,000. This isn’t a number picked without basis – it is the trend seen in
countries thatmanaged to crush the virus, if only temporarily. That’s a huge challenge for India.
India’s Covid-19 numbers could well see an increase in the coming weeks – as testing increases
(although states are blindly using rapid antigen tests without understanding when they should
be used – a theme discussed several times in this column), and as the virus moves into rural
India. Indeed, the pandemic’s progress in India has been outward – from the metros to the other
cities and towns; and from urban districts to rural ones (see front page).
India and the US are similar in terms of their approach to the pandemic – they opened up when
cases were still rising (unlike Europe, where countries opened up only after the number of new
cases started declining). Sure, the US saw a dip and then a long plateau between mid-April and
mid-June, but cases rose rapidly after that. They rose till late July, when they started falling
again. Interestingly, the seven-day average of daily cases in the US is well off its peak seen in
late July, but still higher than the peak seen in early April. In contrast, India’s seven-day
average has never dipped – the trajectory of the coronavirus disease, in terms of number of
cases, has been one steady upward curve as the infection spread across the second-most
populous country in the world.
In the week ended Monday, India added 463,999cases, according to the HT dashboard. This is
26%of the 1.75 million new cases recorded around the world in the same period (the second
number is from the New York Times database). This statistic is worrying, although India’s case
fatality rate of 1.85% is among the lowest in the world, and of the 3.16 million cases recorded
till Monday night, 76% had recovered. The disease is yet to peak in India but doctors have
clearly become better at saving lives.
There has been some debate about a possible second lockdown in the US. There hasn’t been
much talk of one in India. Through August, even some of the states that insisted on partial
lockdowns (on certain days) have eased up. This is understandable – the lockdown has wreaked
havoc on livelihoods and the economy. Once it became clear that the virus wasn’t going away
anytime soon, and that a vaccine wouldn’t be available till early 2021, the focus moved to
living and working with the virus.
The buzz in Delhi is that the next set of so-called unlock guidelines issued by the home ministry
could reflect that. HT reported on Tuesday that Delhi Metro could soon begin operations. This
is a good move, provided the safety protocols that have been put down on paper are faithfully
implemented. That could be problematic, though. Many Indians have shown poor discipline
when it comes to wearing masks or practising social distancing. Police departments around the
country do not seem keen to enforce the home ministry’s guidelines on masks (there is very
poor monitoring in markets and parks, especially). Many people who wear masks, wear them
improperly. And experience around the world has shown that crowds, especially in enclosed
places, are a magnet for the virus. Talk of restarting the DelhiMetro also comes at a time when
the number of cases in Delhi is beginning to inch up again (although it is still 60-70% off its
peaks) – all the more reason why safety and social distancing protocols will need to be strictly
followed, and monitored.
There is no point in pretending things have returned to normal – because they haven’t.
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