New Delhi: On a day the serological survey results in Delhi hogged headlines, the actual numbers in the city looked disproportionately small — just 1,23,747.
India’s R (effective reproduction number) showed an upswing again, which shows the rate of infection spread is rising — another red flag at this stage of the pandemic. This, even as states like Bihar with low testing and Gujarat with high mortality remained pain points nationally.
The testing numbers showed a rise but as the Delhi sero survey has flagged once again that India is probably not even catching a fraction of its actual number of cases.
R value
The R value estimates the rate of spread of the disease in arriving at the probable number of people each infected person will give it to. India’s R value is on the rise currently after several weeks of settling down.
Number of deaths
Even as the health ministry claims that India has the lowest number of deaths per million population, the daily numbers keep rising. India currently has 20.4 deaths per million population.
Mortality rate
The mortality figures show wide variation by states but Gujarat is still at the bottom. The testing numbers are rising and the state is out of the top five heavy disease burden list. Among the big states, Assam and Kerala have low mortality.
Daily tests
In the last 24 hours, 3,33,395 tests were done. India currently has the capacity to test 3.60 lakh samples a day, Niti Ayog member Dr Vinod Paul said Tuesday.
Active cases
Even though India’s overall numbers look daunting at over 11 lakh, the total active cases in the country stand at 4,02,529. However, daily positives continue to hover in the 35,000-40,000 range.
Positivity rate
The positivity rate estimates whether the testing numbers have kept pace with the rate of spread of infection. The ideal rate as per WHO standards is 5%. India currently stands at 11.1%.
Recovered cases
The total recovered cases has been the primary showcase number for the Government of India for the last few weeks even as daily cases have surged. The figure currently stands at 7,24,577.
Total cases
The total cases in the country currently stand at 11,55,191. The percentage of people who have recovered is about 65%.
High-burden states
Maharashtra accounts for about a third of the total cases in the country and a little less than half the deaths. Worryingly, the state continues to report high numbers of both.
Tamil Nadu has shown the way in testing and has low death rates to show, even if it accounts for 50% cases along with Maharashtra.
Delhi’s brief euphoria over less than 1,000 cases is over. With testing numbers up to over 20,000, the city reported 1,349 fresh cases in last 24 hours.
Karnataka so far has seen 67,420 cases and 1,403 deaths. The state has declared a lockdown to bring the situation under control.
Andhra Pradesh’s rising numbers continue to be a cause for worry. The death rate though is less than the national average.
Tests and positive cases
As Delhi rejoiced over the “fall” in cases, it is also a fact that it has tested the least among all the high-burden states. Tamil Nadu tested over 50,000 samples.
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This brings out the bogusness of this false pandemic. Usually India sees more than 150K deaths a year in various forms of fevers without penumonia – penumonia related complications add upto another 200K to this. As of today, 20.4 deaths per million equals to 28,500 deaths in 1.3 billion (1300 million) in past 5 months. Extrapolating a little higher rate (to make the blood thirsty hospitals happy) in the next 7 months, the total deaths will be a max 75,000 – 80,000 (if they stop counting). If they still fancy counting fever deaths as covid by adding all kinds of deaths (thanks to the test kit) it can go to 100,000 – it can happen since hospitals have tasted blood now by charging 500,000 for fever management, they will want every man and his dog to be covid positive. So one question that remains is, where is the new pandemic that was killing several people for which the country was shut down for 6 months? If the political class were a little more educated, the writing thats on the wall from last Jan would have been clear to them and they didnt have to try to stop virus by barricading the roads, let this country hang its head on shame!!!