Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

ICMR tests update : daily - 1,492,409 , total - 68,928,440. Now, is this reconciliation for the last few days as the ICMR was reporting lower and lower numbers compared to states ? Or are we gonna go for a huge day with 100K+ cases for the first time in the world.

I am pretty sure that we won't see much higher than 1275K tomorrow. It must be some "reconciling" of data. I'm glad they got some extra tests in the count. They have been missing data by some 100K-200K for the last few days.

[jayakris]

Ok, so I checked my data. Here are the test mismatch numbers (State's total - ICMR total) for the last 16 days

18,232
15,728
-8,523
76,468
47,417
-10,705
103,331
116,607
65,558
150,354
290,833
26,430
264,850
302,388
283,233
61,365

So it has been growing and went to as high as 300K two days ago when ICMR said 933K and the states showed 1236K by evening. The 7-day-average mismatch (per day) had gone up from 50K in late July to around 115K tests by the end of August, coinciding with many states adding a lot of AG tests. Then the average fell to about 35K by mid September. It went up quite drastically over the last 8 days to 197K mismatch (maybe because ICMR asked for PCR re-test of AG-negatives and the states stopped reporting some negatives? Not sure). Hopefully it will start coming down a bit now.

Anyway, from my data, ICMR is missing about 5 million tests from the total since July 21st, when I started keeping daily data on this. 58.03 million tests were reported by the states since then, but only 53.04 million is shown by ICMR.

[jayakris]

Agree with suresh. Let's wait for a couple more days of million plus testing.

Yeah, let us wait. We waited 6 months. Why not a few days more before saying "phew"?

Okay. Phew, then! .... Waited for 3 more days. Got over 1.2 million tests on each day. 9th day of dropping 7-day averages.

We had +85.7K today, about a 1000 less than on Thursday. The tests were 1229K, up slightly from 1218K yesterday (so, the ICMR's 1463K was just reconciliation with numbers missed earlier this week). So our positivity was again dropped a teeny bit, but is right there at 6.97% today. Active cases dropped again by about 7.6K with 96.4K discharges... Deaths were fewer at 1093 too. All good numbers.

This is the first time that the states reported over 1200K tests for more than 2 days in a row. Got that for 4 days now.

[jayakris]

Just for fun, I saw this note from the state of Rhode Isaland (USA) today: "NOTE: Rhode Island: "As a part of on-going data quality improvement work, roughly 240 duplicative records have been removed from Rhode Island's cumulative case count. These records were spread out over several months. Rhode Island's hospitalization dataset is currently undergoing data quality improvement work."

They should from Indian bureaucrats, who would just say in a footnote - "Cumulative count reduced by 240 after de-duplication, as part of ongoing data quality improvement reconciliation on hospitalization from earlier months"

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ICMR Update: 70,269,975 total... Friday tests: 1,341,535... The states may show lower numbers. Lab count: +5 to 1828

[sameerph]

So looks like we are done with first wave. Now let us hope we do not get a second waive although it is likely that we will get one when we fully open like before Covid. In fact going regionwise, some of the regions may have already got a second waive like Mumbai, Delhi, Kerala etc. Mumbai and Delhi clearly had a second waive and are on downswing from there too. So, hopefully next waive if any in those places will be not as steep.

[suresh]

I agree that the first wave or the 1.5 wave (as it must be a combination of first wave in places and second wave in other) is coming to a close. I hope the dip continues a little bit longer.

[jayakris]

^^ I hope so too. We may have some small rises still to come. I doubt if we will go back up above our peak 98K all that soon though. It may take a while before we drop to 75K and all that. Kerala, MP and Chattisgarh are not in any mood to drop as yet.

Looks like we will have a rise today to +88K or so... The 7-day average will drop even then.

[Omkara]

we will go up during the festival season. If we can halt it 80-100k region for a month or two while testing over two million people a day, it will be an achievement. Very high percentage of everyone I know who went out regularly over the last few months tested positive.

[jayakris]

^^ But we will also have a counter-effect once the rains stop, which should be pretty soon. The monsoons have played a big part in delaying our peak, I am sure. Hot weather does seem to help a little bit.

EDIT: We had +88.8K cases. It went up 3K thanks to Kerala and Maharashtra, but the seven-day average still dipped a little bit from 85,167 to 84,622... The states reported a couple of thousand more tests than yesterday... We had 1230K tests, and the positivity went up slightly to 7.2%

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ICMR Update: 71,257,836 total tests... Saturday tests: 987,861... I think the states will report more than that on Sunday. Lab count: 1828

[jayakris]

I get the feeling that the drops in cases is still temporary and that we will start growing again fairly soon. May be not as badly as 3 weeks ago, but a slow growth upwards. Just my feeling. The daily cases may not come down much from this week, and next week's peaks may go back up to the 90s again (maybe low 90s). Just a feeling. But let us see.

If Kerala starts dropping, I would feel better. But no sign of it. KER showed 7400 today and may be going up to 10 or 12K in another week or two. Karnataka is also unpredictable. TN is not dropping like expected, either.

[Omkara]

Well Maharashtra reported 2k less. That's good. Some buffer.

My in laws went out for a ride after a long time. They live in Bangalore. People on street just don't care. No mask, no social distancing.... That feedback is from all over the country. Who knows if we start testing over 2m a day we might see higher numbers.

[jayakris]

Maharashtra showed 180K tests today and 18K cases. Clearly it is not tests conducted today, but some tests total correction. They have clearly been missing test data, and must have found some. There is probably more missing data.

Anyway, a couple of updates today on the testing situation in Maharashtra

Maharashtra: RT-PCR tests close to total capacity, districts may have to rely on antigen kits (Indian Express)
Maharashtra: Plans on for three-fold rise in testing (Times of India)

Huh? The worst health minister in India, Sri Rajesh Tope, now says Modiji has asked them to do more testing. Six months of bullshit, and now he needs the PM to tell him to test more. Worse still, if a word from Modiji was all they needed, then what the hell was Modiji doing all this while? 35K people had to die in Maharashtra before Tope, Uddhav, Modi, etc got down to thinking of doing something? Ridiculous!

[jayakris]

We had +82.8K today... From about 1244K tests reported by the states today. That gives a positivity of 6.65%, but I think the 183K tests reported by Maharashtra includes a 100K tests that were missing from earlier (or they made a simple typo; nothing is beyond the nitwits that are in Maharashtra officialdom!)... Anyway, if we take out the 100K, we get a positivity of 7.23%, which right at the 7.23% we had yesterday. That is probably our actual positivity today. Okay either way though!...

But right now, 90% of India is growing at a pretty low 1.17% growth rate (see today's summary analysis)... I get the feeling that the rural districts' growth rates are falling faster than the urban districts', which is interesting!

[jayakris]

Revisiting my predictions from 2 weeks ago (Sep 13), which was checked and revised in my post last Sunday (Sep 20):

New 14-day prediction for Sep 27 is 6.290M to 6.350M

So the revised prediction for next Sunday (Sep 27) is 6.110 to 6.140M
New 14-day prediction for Sunday, Oct 4, is 6.770M to 6.820M

We only got to 6.073M today, so it is 37K less than I expected for the best case for today! Good.
I will lower the next Sunday (Oct 4) prediction to 6.640 to 6.670M
New 14-day prediction for Sunday, Oct 11, is 7.230M to 7.270M

Both these predictions assume that the drop in daily additions will end and that we will start a slow rise again, pretty much right away. There is pretty high probability that we will fall below those ranges in reality, though!

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ICMR Update: 71,967,230 total tests... Sunday tests: 709,394... Clearly low-ball numbers. The states are going to show at least 950K on Monday; trust me! Lab count: 1832

[suresh]

Nice graphics by @nikhil_i: