Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

The best news today for me was that Chhattisgarh has raised their testing to 32K. Their positivity dropped from 16.3 to 14.7 to 11.9, as the testing went up from 19K to 26K to 32K over the last 3 days. Phew. If they keep the positivity below this level, things may not go totally haywire in Chhattisgarh. So, one less concern. When the testing numbers do not change for days on end and positivity rise, I start getting nervous about any of these states. India has tons of people who CAN get infected if we take the foot off the pedal and allow things to deteriorate. Even a Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand can have 10K cases a day in no time if we don't watch it.

Now MP and Punjab remain with testing concerns (with the usual rider that I have given up on Maharashtra and Karnataka). For now, that is.

But otherwise, a terrific day today, as we had only 92.9K cases. 4K less than yesterday. The 7-day average dipped again, and we actually had more discharges than new cases today, too!

EDIT: The states reported about 1156K cases, and our positivity was a teeny bit better than yesterday's, at 8.04%... But the good news was actually that many states that needed to raise the tests did (while Bihar and Gujarat that tests way too many at 1.5% positivity, tested a bit less, which was just fine).

[jayakris]

ICMR Update: 62,454,254... Friday tests: 881,911... Huh? The testing total keeps going down? WTF?... Lab count: 1768

[depleter]

Only 8,81,911 tests yesterday when they should be doing double that tests.............WTH is happening????
This is just criminal negligence from everyone out there. No other reason apart from that. Modi is just too busy with the China situation. And news channels completely are just focusing on some bollywood drug mafia(I do believe the flow of the news is changed on govt instructions). While this is a commonly used method in many countries to cover up govt ineptness, for the first I am seeing it in India in such a large scale.

[suresh]

This is not the time for the number of tests to come down.

[jayakris]

This is really weird. I cannot find any state that had any noticeable drop in testing (see the updates). In fact, Uttarakhand raised it 40-50% today (to 16K tests) and many others have inched up. Bihar did some 30K more than yesterday too. More WTF on ICMR's test total given in the morning!

Anyway, it doesn't look like a drop today, but seemingly no big rise either. Maybe a couple of thousand more than yesterday but not a whole lot.

[jayakris]

You know that everybody in India has given up, when Covid19india is not even updating the numbers properly. They went to sleep after 88K cases today. They are making mistakes in their numbers. Anyway, my number is the correct one. +92,540 cases today. (EDIT: 92574 actually, as ARP had a bit more, +245 and not +211)

So we had a small drop again, from +92,969 yesterday.. It is technically a drop, but actually we had about 1000 more than yesterday in cases found today. Maharashtra "reconciled" data and did "de-duplication" as per the state bulletin (I love Indian bureaucrats' words), and removed 1388 from their total, so we have a 400 case drop today. The 7-day average dropped again too. Actually it would've dropped even without Maharashtra's "de-duplication"

EDIT: Don't pay attention to what ICMR said about the tests. The states reported 1173K tests today, a few thousands more than yesterday. So, along with the case total, our positivity also dropped. It was 7.88% today, compared to 8.03% yesterday. Great!

[suresh]

The numbers for TN have not been dropping. It is scary to think that this might be the starting point for the inevitable second wave.

[jayakris]

The numbers for TN have not been dropping. It is scary to think that this might be the starting point for the inevitable second wave.

Don't worry; there will be no second wave in TN. That has already happened. The so called second wave really happens only when the first wave is brought down fully (or noticeably) in the places hit by the disease first. That was not done in TN in Chennai and the nearby districts, and soon after in the Madurai/Theni/Virudhunagar clusters (which itself could've looked like a second wave, had the Chennai area been tested and dropped faster). That wave got merged with the first wave. So did the next wave in the Thoothukkudi/Kanyakumari area, and then the wave in the Nagapattanam/Thanjavur/Cuddalore area, and then Coimbatore/Eerode/Tiruppur/Salem. They were all merged with the earlier waves and we saw basically only one wave in TN. It is the same in India as a whole too. We delayed the spread to new places, but we never killed the wave in any place (except in Kerala in the early days). So we really only see one wave in India and in the large states like TN.

We are actually in the very final wave of the last districts remaining in TN - Dharmapuri/Krishnagiri. That's it. After these districts, there just isn't any place left in TN. There will be no further wave. The drop will just be gradual though, the way TN tests and due to their continued refusal to use AG tests for early identification of the disease with people's own initiative. If they allow it, the numbers will drop a bit faster (after a temporary uptick). Not going to happen, I guess.

The only way that another wave could start is if the infecting rate (R0) goes up everywhere, due to testing becoming really low suddenly, with the health departments completely stopping all their work. Like not even making test kits available and all that. Doesn't seem to happen even in the worst parts of the world, and India isn't that bad to let it happen. Things like removal of lockdowns, Monsoons, festival seasons etc, school openings etc that cause serious higher R0 values also can create large subsequent waves everywhere, but most of it is all already done in India. That applies to TN too, so no need to worry.

In fact, there is one city in TN, which is almost a curiosity in all of India, that never had a proper first wave and almost never got into my bad list except for maybe a couple of days along with nearby districts. Tiruchirappalli at the center-most point. That is the only place that I think can still have a big wave and produce 500 to 1000 cases a day for a month. With every area around it having calmed down, i don't think it is going to happen. Tiruchi is one city that escaped trouble of the worst kind. It never had more than 150 or 200 cases a day at any point, if even that!

[jayakris]

ICMR Update: 63,661,060 total tests... Saturday tests: 1,206,806... It looks like the numbers they missed yesterday were added today. I don't expect the states to report that much on Sunday. Maybe somewhere in the 1150K to 1200K range... Lab count: 1773

[Omkara]

As unlock happened cases went up. It had to and we had to unlock or else our economy would have gone for a toss. A recent report from Mumbai said upto 10-30% of beds are yet unoccupied as most cases the patients are home quarantined. Now with exception of school, colleges and offices we have opened everything. In some places schools have opened. Offices have started functioning with lower staff strength. We have hit an equilibrium with covid.

Gap between two unlock phases have always been less. Hence we never saw a down trend. By the time we stabilised at one unlock level, next set of relaxations came up and cases went up. Now that we have mostly opened up and next set of opening is a month late it's not unscientific to believe that cases may come down. The next major opening is the festive seasons. 31 days of madness that should mark the peak of cases, as people will go out. The lull in between (shradh period) may help us. Further these festivals are critical for North India and not so popular in South, so some cushion for us.

Fingers crossed!

[sameerph]

As unlock happened cases went up. It had to and we had to unlock or else our economy would have gone for a toss. A recent report from Mumbai said upto 10-30% of beds are yet unoccupied as most cases the patients are home quarantined. Now with exception of school, colleges and offices we have opened everything. In some places schools have opened. Offices have started functioning with lower staff strength. We have hit an equilibrium with covid.

True, I also see a few roadside food vendors now in Mumbai although officially they are still not allowed. Strength in offices is increasing and buses seems to be packed now. Also I hear that suburban trains which are currently running only for govt employees are now packed with others also intruding. In some of the bars I hear they are allowing visitors thru back door.
Very difficult for a government to keep imposing these restrictions for a long time. I remember when first 3 weeks lockdown was imposed there were doubts expressed here, it people would get restless within those 3 weeks. Now, we are 6 months from that date.

As of now in Mumbai, the only things which I see fully closed are restaurants, temples, gymnasiums, swimming pools and cinema halls. I think in other states, many of these have also opened.

[jayakris]

^^ Yeah, the numbers could go up yet again in Maharashtra, with more and more things opening... For now, things look rather flat, though Mumbai numbers are inching up. I expect to see 25 to 28K next week on one of the peak days. It could just stay in the below 23K range too though. The positivity in testing did not go up this week. Well, it cannot go much more up anyway, but it inched down from 25% to 23.5% ... We will take whatever minutely good news from Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, we are headed to another drop in the national total. Probably not much higher than +90K or +91K today. The test total went up (though mostly because of Bihar, who got less than 1 percent positivity today, which is simply unbelievable!), so our positivity should be lower too. All good things. Kerala, Karnataka and MP continue to refuse to test well though. Kerala is filled with educated idiots, as I have always generally hinted. They talk way too much too, while screwing up.

[jayakris]

Damn! Jharkhand did another AG test "mela" today. Did 81K tests and found just 1492 positives. Bihar also did a huge number. 177K tests, the highest done by any state in 24 hours.

Consider this. Bihar and Jharkhand did 258K tests and got 3047 cases at 1.2% positivity. Maharashtra did 86K tests and got 20,627 at 23.5% positivity. If I were the Maharashtra CM, I wouldn't know where to hide. Probably run from one toilet to another, I guess. I suppose the Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh CMs would join, to have a toilet party - and they can learn from Uddhav on how it feels to have the whole state as a toilet anyway - as these other states are trying hard to go down the toilets right now with Karnataka almost there with Maharashtra.

[jayakris]

If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck for enough days, maybe it is a duck? .... If the numbers drop, and the positivity drops for a few days, maybe it is a drop? Who knows!

We got only 87.6K cases today, 10K below our peak some 10 days ago. The tests went up to around 1234K today, to about our highest total, as per the states. A lot of it were in Bihar and Jharkhand who did a total of about 80K above the expected number, but their case numbers are already only in the 1500-1900 range and the drops (about 5K) happened elsewhere, where the test numbers did not drop that much either. So we got a positivity of 7.1% today. The death numbers have been relatively flat for the last few days too (and any drop in deaths will be seen only later anyway). The active case total dropped again today, too.

For now, things look pretty good. Let's keep waiting for a week more before thinking of any celebration.

[jayakris]

Revisiting my predictions from 2 weeks ago (Sep 6), which was checked and revised in my post last Sunday (Sep 13):

New 14-day prediction for Sunday, Sep 20 is 5.550M to 5.600M

I will keep the next Sunday (Sep 20) prediction right there and tighten it to 5.560 to 5.590M.
New 14-day prediction for Sep 27 is 6.290M to 6.350M

We were way, way, below that prediction from last week, and finished with 5.486M... Nice!... Since the average daily curve just went over a peak and is on a down slope, I have no clue what to predict for next Sunday or the Sunday after. I will go ahead and take it that the down-slope will slow down a bit next week and that things will start going up gradually again. That is under the assumption that the bad-testing states like Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, MP and Chhattisgarh have enough of growth left in them to counteract the drops in AP, TN, BIH, JH, etc. That is, I'm expecting daily totals to go back up to around +97K peak next week and a +100K peak the week after. But it could be well below all that, if we are truly over a peak and are on to more drops. Tough for me to see such drops, unless I see WB, GUJ, PUN, HAR, RAJ etc get out of their slow growth phase and actually see drops. Except for Gujarat, none of them has testing rate high enough to say they will get drops anyway.

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