Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[Kumar]

Welcome back Jay! I am not sure how you managed to post this numbers day in and day out for the past two years. hats off to you

I don't know if I would agree. At this point, all these travel restrictions are only causing inconvenience to people. Omicron is all around. I don't know what international travel restrictions can accomplish. Letting it run its course, rather than delay things and cause more hardships for people over a longer period.

Mostly, what omicron is doing is to give people immunity. Cross your fingers and pray that the deaths numbers are not going to skyrocket. All indications are that they won't - though we may still see 500 to 1000 deaths a day soon, again ... Hopefully not 3000 and 4000+ like during the Delta wave, even if the Omicron wave may peak at higher (or significantly higher) per-day numbers than did the Delta peak. It's all tough to predict.

For me, the home quarantine for international travelers when omicron started may have pushed back the omicron wave by 15 days, assuming 90% of them followed it. I agree, at this time, this home quarantine is basically assuming that every traveller is flying in sick. Our biggest mistake, not giving boosters to our elders. That decision could turn out to be extremely costly. I do hope that booster drives happen outdoor or otherwise this wave may explode very quickly.

For example, UK scrapped pre departure test, to promote travel. They still want travelers to test after getting to UK. This is even more stupid, becoz someone be traveling with a sick patient and then be forced to isolate after getting to UK making their stay very expensive.

By the way, check the article which predicts grim times in US.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/01 ... ropes.html

My hope is the fact that at least 80% of adults are vaccinated may hopefully stave off such a wave in india.

[sameerph]

What is Gauteng pattern ?

Gauteng had a quick rise (fuelled mostly by Omicron) over 15-20 days (I don't remember the precise number) and then numbers started to fall quickly. So Mumbai and Delhi will show if such a pattern will happen in India.

Here is a study of Mumbai:

Thanks, Suresh. Again 20K+ in Mumbai. Positives and TPR appears more or less flat for last 3 days. So, have they reached peak? Let's see.

[jayakris]

Welcome back Jay! I am not sure how you managed to post this numbers day in and day out for the past two years. hats off to you

Thank you! The problem is that I get quite out of kilter unless I have a sense of what is going on with Covid and how bad things were, so posting the numbers was mostly to keep myself calm

[Kumar]

So Mumbai case totals are almost double the delta high (around 11k) so far. Hopefully this is the drop in cases and we keep our fingers crossed that we are very close to peak.

The following article

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/whe ... 17514.html

As per the above article, they expect it to peak by end of next week in Mumbai and Delhi and for india by month end.

Our guess for peak value of Mumbai is between 30-60K cases/day (7-day average). This appears large, but hospitalizations are happening for only ~3.5% reported cases and so bed requirement will peak at ~10K, which should be manageable, he further added

Extrapolating from Mumbai, we estimate that peak could arrive in Jan-end/Feb-beginning. Its value could be between 4-8 lakh cases per day (7-day average)

Grrr, just what i expected, but did not want.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/appoint ... vt-2695745

Meanwhile, the Centre has already said that the precautionary COVID-19 vaccine dose will be the same vaccine as administered previously in the first two doses

This is a decision with no scientific basis and is driven by vaccine supply.

[Kumar]

Nice interview with Shaheed Jameel, former head of covid response in India,

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/intervie ... meel-80740

In this article, Shaheed clearly says

Covishield is made using a virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees, which is used to make the COVID-19 virus spike protein. So, when you have given two doses of Covishield, you are not just raising immune response to the spike protein, you are also raising immune response to all the chimp proteins in the vehicle virus that are greater in number.

So, if you keep on giving that vaccine, you are preferentially boosting responses to the chimp virus proteins and not the COVID-19 virus spike protein.

I guess with our supply issues, we had no choice. Either boost using covishield or give kids covishield. I was hoping we would boost using covovax or corbevax.


At least, looks like astrazaneca booster doos boost antibody levels.
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/boos ... on-variant

[suresh]

The following article

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/whe ... 17514.html

As per the above article, they expect it to peak by end of next week in Mumbai and Delhi and for india by month end.

Our guess for peak value of Mumbai is between 30-60K cases/day (7-day average). This appears large, but hospitalizations are happening for only ~3.5% reported cases and so bed requirement will peak at ~10K, which should be manageable, he further added

Extrapolating from Mumbai, we estimate that peak could arrive in Jan-end/Feb-beginning. Its value could be between 4-8 lakh cases per day (7-day average)

The credibility of Manindra Agarwal and the rest of the team is zero.

[Kumar]

I don’t think any of the covid models have gotten their prediction right. As I had shared in an eatlier post, they predicted worst case scenario for US omicron peak at 500k at end of January. This was predicted in December. We have blown way past that and are now looking at 680k average just in first week of January.

[suresh]

Top States 8/1/2022 Saturday

MH - 41434 (Mumbai 20318)
DL - 20181 (TPR 19.6%)
WB - 18802 (TPR 29.6%)
TN - 10978 (TPR 7.9%, Chennai 5098)
KA - 8906 (TPR 5.4%)
UP - 6401
KL - 5944 (TPR 9.9%)
GJ - 5677
BR - 4526
RJ - 4108
OR - 3679
HA - 3541 (TPR 7.26%)
TA - 2606
Goa - 1789 (TPR 23.3%)
MP - 1572
UK - 1560
MZ - 852 (TPR 15%)
AP - 839
HP - 728
J&K - 655

Total - 144778

We might touch 160K cases today.

[suresh]

I don’t think any of the covid models have gotten their prediction right. As I had shared in an eatlier post, they predicted worst case scenario for US omicron peak at 500k at end of January. This was predicted in December. We have blown way past that and are now looking at 680k average just in first week of January.

But these guys have no expertise but sadly have the government listening to them. It is like the 200K prediction that I made a few days ago. That is okay because I am a nobody making a prediction in a forum.

[jayakris]

^^^ Don't worry, you and I had pushed it up to 600K-750K last week after the first day or two of the wave.

There is some good chance, I think, that we would shoot up to even +600 or +750K a day by even late January, but it may drop back to less than 100K by even mid February. It could be an extremely sharp peak and a very sharp drop too. A possibility.

Yes, that is what should happen if trends from other countries hold here. Our peak will be flatter due to the sheer size of our country.

The peak may not be much higher, but it might happen even faster than we thought. Even the peak-flattening that I also thought might happen, may not be much. The lags between the states on the start of the wave is only like a week or so. It could be a sharper peak, which means it could be higher too. 1.5M or something in 2 weeks???

[Kumar]

Depends on if peple are rushing to get tested?
If they are asymptomatic and govt is not forcing close contacts to test and our testing ability(something that Suresh had raised earlier). we could have a slightly flatter peak. My guess is that we will be closer to million not becoz we have less cases, but becoz people (especially younger adults are not getting tested).

[jayakris]

^^^ Makes sense

[Kumar]

We have bunch of state elections coming up Feb 10th. Should they have just decided to postpone elections for a month? Omicron and election rallies together may not be a good combination at this stage.

[Omkara]

We have bunch of state elections coming up Feb 10th. Should they have just decided to postpone elections for a month? Omicron and election rallies together may not be a good combination at this stage.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Well said. What if Omicron goes out of hand and people get upset and people vote differently.

[Atithee]

It has been observed that Corona cannot impact election rallies. Nor agitating farmers. So, smooth sailing ahead.