Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

We had another +14.3K on Saturday, from about 719K tests @ 1.98% ... It was 7K in MAH, 4K in KER and 3.3K elsewhere. Outside of MAJH and KER, the positivity has been in the 0.50 to 0.55% range for the last few weeks. Just Maharashtra and Kerala getting high positivities. MAH is just over 10% and Kerala has fallen to around 6.8%

Kerala has also fallen to around 4360 in 7-day average, which is their lowest in 5.5 months, since early September when the first peak suddenly went up there. Punjab did not rise today over what we saw the last couple of days. Same in Indore in MP too. Let us wait till the next week to see what else starts off or if those PUN and MP clusters grow more. I looked pretty carefully, and there isn't a second wave coming up anywhere else as of now. Consider the current rise localized in MAH, Punjab and one city in MP.

No reason to panic, but it is good that the MAH numbers are scaring everybody that a second wave is starting all over India (not at all!!!). The central government has already written to the states to increase testing urgently and all that. That's what is needed!

In fact there was a Central health ministry press release today, saying there is "surge in 6 states" (MAH, KER, PUN, MP, CHG, J&K). Why J&K?? There has been no sign of any serious rise there (unless you call +20 per day over 2 weeks as a scary "surge")... CHG also has really no rise, though Durg and Raigad once n a while show some clusters. But I was glad to see that the central government didn't waste time. Within about 5 days after I started screaming "2nd wave, 2nd wave" they also got into the act ... Good, good

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ICMR Update: 211,551,746 total tests... Sunday tests: 620,216 (much higher than the 480K last sunday).. Lab count: 2393

[jayakris]

Here is the weekly update of state-wise vaccinations ranks on a per 1000 people (population) basis. Until the end of Saturday the 20th (Day 36 of vaccinations). We have done second doses for 8 days. So, the people count and the total-doses count are separately given. [Here is last Sunday's numbers for comparison]

Code: Select all

		Persons	Total	Persons	Shots
		(First	shots	per 1K	per 1K
		Doses)		people	people
Lakshadweep	1809	1924	25.843	27.486
Tripura		82369	93956	20.634	23.536
Ladakh		5631	6231	19.218	21.266
Sikkim		11865	12565	17.869	18.923
Jammu&Kashmir	200695	207426	15.201	15.711
Delhi		294081	311410	14.842	15.717
Dadra/N. Haveli	4939	5183	13.719	14.397
Arunachal Pra.	19702	23743	13.100	15.787
Himachal Pra.	94897	106973	13.000	14.654
Manipur		40215	41926	12.960	13.511
Mizoram		14627	16868	12.271	14.151
Andaman/Nicobar	4846	6152	12.207	15.496
Gujarat		821940	882070	12.099	12.984
Chhattisgarh	340557	361225	11.856	12.576
Uttarakhand	130908	138054	11.750	12.392
Kerala		399064	437893	11.361	12.467
Chandigarh	12953	13748	10.986	11.661
Rajasthan	782701	821059	10.130	10.627
Odisha		438127	533093	10.032	12.207
Nagaland	21526	25435	10.012	11.830
Goa		15070	16183	9.786	10.508
Karnataka	540868	654298	8.220	9.944
Andhra Pradesh	407935	493471	7.812	9.450
Madhya Pradesh	640805	644583	7.793	7.839
Telangana	280973	368132	7.549	9.891
Meghalaya	23877	24506	7.406	7.601
Haryana		208308	232295	7.265	8.102
Maharashtra	875752	922728	7.169	7.554
Daman and Diu	1735	1948	6.804	7.639
Jharkhand	252634	263959	6.754	7.057
West Bengal	633271	683057	6.535	7.049
Puducherry	9251	10104	6.151	6.718
Uttar Pradesh	1066290	1152042	4.740	5.121
Tamil Nadu	339686	370846	4.488	4.899
Assam		153259	164309	4.469	4.791
Bihar		522379	561343	4.371	4.697
Punjab		122429	136288	4.100	4.564
Miscellaneous	306557	338147		
				
		10.125M	11.085M	7.598	8.319

The ranking of the larger 22 states: J&K (15.2), DEL, HP, GUJ, CHG, UK, KER(11.4), RAJ, ODI, KAR(9.8), AP, MP, TEL, HAR, MAH(7.2), JH, WB(6.4), UP, TN(4.5), ASM, BIH, PUN(4.1)

That is, J&K has done 1 in 66 people, and Punjab has done 1 in 244 people among the larger states. Now 9 of the larger states (up to Odisha) have done more than 1 in 100. The national average is 1 in 132. The pace needs to really go up a lot, to at least 5 times, if not 10 times.

[jayakris]

Here is what we have done week to week on vaccinations:

After 207K on the first say, our weekly counts (Sunday through Saturday) are 1375K, 2162K, 2031K, 2488K, 2821K in five weeks. The numbers are slowly going up, but too slowly... If we count only the people vaccinated with at least a first dose, then it dropped to 1884K this past week, compared to 2465K the previous week. We absolutely need to see at least 4500K total with 3000K first doses next week. Preferably 6M total and 4M first doses, but that is just too much to expect, without some days going up over a million soon. Our highest total a day so far is about 767K this past Thursay, but other days have all been about 300-450K max.

Again, the central ministry has written to all the state principal secretaries that the rates must increase urgently. They have also asked states to drop the off-days in the schedule. Do it every day except Sunday, is the instruction. It remains to be seen how much the states will listen. Always a problem in India.

[suresh]

The pool of people being vaccinated needs to widen as well. I was hoping for some announcement on that front but have not seen any so far. Older people, people with co-morbidities etc. can be added easily and we should see numbers go up faster.

[jayakris]

The pool of people being vaccinated needs to widen as well. I was hoping for some announcement on that front but have not seen any so far. Older people, people with co-morbidities etc. can be added easily and we should see numbers go up faster.

It looks like the Center's circular yesterday did mention this. I think March 1st is when they intend to start expanding things. They may need to add private hospitals to the list. That is the only way this will go up much. Luckily there are enough people talking about this now in the newspapers and media, so things will hopefully start revving up a bit soon.

[jayakris]

We had a +10.6K today (Monday)... 5.2K in MAH, 2.2K in KER and 3.2K elsewhere... 615K tests at 1.72%... Nothing too alarming, but our numbers are rising thanks to Maharashtra. The 7-day average is 13K now.

Maharashtra did 73.2K tests on Sunday, which was a surprise! Almost double what it was last Sunday. Have they started raising test counts? We will wait and see tomorrow.

629K vaccinations on Monday (338K new people/ first doses)... It was 436K last Monday (with 300K new people) ... This just won't do. Need to increase the person count much more week-to-week. The total count is increasing fast, showing that the capacity is there to do much more than we have been doing.

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ICMR Update: 212,230,431 total tests... Monday tests: 678,685

[jayakris]

Haha... Telangana decides that they won't give daily updates on Covid. Only weekly updates from now on. https://newsmeter.in/telangana/no-covid-19-daily-bulletin-in-telangana-health-dept-to-focus-on-vaccination-674630
Those couple of hapless guys who were checking the Covid portal and making a bulletin are needed for vaccination. I guess they are asked to run around Hyderabad and find people to vaccinate or something ... Okay, how about just tweeting out a case number? We weren't reading your 40 page update that never even gave a district-wise total at any point (so as to cover up data, obviously). Ridiculous.

But I wish these state guys would stop acting like Covid is all done. It gives the wrong idea to people. It is not done at all. Not till we vaccinate at least 300-400 million people, which is apparently in Niti Aayog's five-year plan!

Anyway, unless the Central health ministry gives an update the next morning, we won't have TEL going to daily counts from now on.

[jayakris]

Tuesday: +13.7K today from 747K tests @ 1.84% ... 6.2K in MAH, 4K in KER and 3.5K elsewhere. Maharashtra did not explode or anything, but let us wait and see how things go. Hopefully this is a short-lived second wave that doesn't go too high in daily cases. Kerala is going down nicely by 100+ cases a day steadily. Punjab's cluster is basically around BhagatSinghNagar district and Ludhiana. It is going up but not to very high numbers. Punjab announced yesterday that they will raise testing to 30K (from around 17K to 20K now), which will help.

Did another bad area analysis, and did not find anything too bad elsewhere. I think there is a tendency for some small 20 or 30 people clusters to form in some places (like Vadodara in Gujarat today) but nothing adding up to big numbers anywhere as of now.

So-so in vaccinations today with 420K total for the day. Probably about 230K first doses (EDIT: actually 279K first doses). Better than last Tuesday's 160K first doses, I guess.

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ICMR Update: 213,036,275 total tests... Tuesday tests: 805,844... Hmmm, that is a good rise in test count.

[jayakris]

Hmmm... +8867 in Maharashtra today... Whoa. But it is from 81K tests, at 11%... Much better testing than they were doing during the first wave, when the positivity was in the 22-25% range. So there is hope that they are catching the patients early enough when clusters form and preventing further infections. If Maharashtra keeps the testing in the 75K to 125K range for a few days, i am sure this will go up and come down fairly fast. Won't be as bad as the first time. But I guess we should expect up to even 12K or 15K cases a day in Maharashtra fairly soon.

Punjab is up to +558 today, about double what it was a week ago. Not good, but those are small numbers and the testing there is at a 2.7% rate, so it should get under control soon. Punjab has had 2 or 3 waves like this already (like with the returnees from Nanded Gurudwara) and things got under control fairly soon within 3-4 weeks there.

Telangana had a small spike today to +196... Gujarat also is threatening to rise... Haryana showing a slight rise. West Bengal refusing to drop below +175, so they may rise soon too.. Keep an eye on all of them... Kerala is going down and down now, thank God.

We are back to Prasen's original prophesy of "whack-a-mole" once again.

[jayakris]

+16.9K today (Wednesday). That is bad. In addition to MAH going to +8.9K (and Kerala dropping slightly to +4.1K) the rest of India went up to +3.9K, showing a tendency to rise in many places. It was about 3K just a few days ago, and only about 300 is Punjab's share. So there is rise elsewhere too. On the other hand, we had a 0.51% positivity outside of MAH and KER, and so it is also because other states raised the tests a bit today. Overall we had 790K tests at 2.14%, though that number is almost entirely due to MAH and KER showing 11% and 5.8%

But the 7-day average curve is on a fairly steep upward trend now. Up by 562 to 13.8K now. But we are about to show 20K+ pretty soon, again. No doubt that there is a second wave on. That the states are not going down on the test counts is a good sign though.