Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

Only +14K today, from 882K tests at an even lower positivity of 1.58%... About 2500 fewer cases than on last Sunday... Only about 5.9K outside of Kerala and Maharashtra. The 7-day average dropped again by about 360 to 15K. We only had 145 deaths today.

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ICMR Update: 187,093,036 total tests... Sunday tests: 548,168 (really low... Are we not getting even 12K cases tomorrow?)

[jayakris]

A fairly good report on the TN situation in TOI - Low volunteer turnout continues on Day 2. Healthcare workers are just not turning up to take the shots, it seems. Jeez. People! There are a lot of folks out there who are praying to get vaccinated soon. This is crazy. Kudos go to the Tamil Nadu Covid head honcho, Sri. J. Radhakrishnan, who went and took a shot to make a point. That too, he took a Bharat Biotech Covaxin shot!! Thank you, sir!... That is the spirit. Heck, 2.24 lakh people have taken the shot and only ONE in 500 have complained of any side-effect (all minor, like fever/headache/nausea) and only 1 in 75K (3 of them) have been hospitalized... Two of the 3 have been already discharged too. Come on, people! Go get the damn vaccine shot.

The states are all following different schedules for which days of the week they will vaccinate, and the central Ministry of Health released the schedules today. By my stats, 27 states do it on Monday, 25 on Tuesday, 10 on Wednesday, 22 on Thursday, 27 on Friday and 22 on Saturday. So, expect two peaks per week on the vaccinations stats. The only state doing it on all 6 working days is AP. Most states are doing 4 days per week. Two states (UP and Goa) have only 2 days scheduled per week.

[sameerph]

AIMS Director Randeep Guleria also took a covaxin shot. But there are other doctors who are refusing to take it.

[Url=https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/c ... n-efficacy]

[jayakris]

And a nice TOI editorial
But the targeted 5000 sites with 100 shots a day, just will not do. That is still half a million (500K) shots a day (even if all the scheduled people show up; probably not. Count 400K). We need at least 4 or 5 times as many, to get 1350 million people vaccinated in a couple of years. We need at least 25% of the population (337 million) inoculated before the rainy season by mid June, if you ask me. It is rather clear to me that it is the rainy season that really got the first wave going, and we should expect another big wave at least by then - if not earlier.

To get 25% population done (337 M) in 150 days by mid June, we need 2+ million a day. At the current max capacity schedule, we won't even do 70 million (just 5 percent of the population) by then...

In other words, we need a massive upgrade in personnel. Lots of positive talk of world's largest vaccination drive, and atma-nirbhar and vaccine "stockpiling" and all that so far... but the numbers don't add up, as far as I can see! Need FIVE times the rate that the Government is talking about. Maybe they are following the pattern during the testing ramp up, of not promising too much but actually ramping things up adequately in the end. I hope so.

[suresh]

I expect around 30-40% of the front line workers to turn down the vaccine. We should expect numbers to pick up starting today as even 60% is a huge number. At some point, the remainder might be given their choice of vaccine and so a large number will get vaccinated. It is nice to see some doctors volunteer to take Covaxin -- there is no doubt that they are effectively part of the Phase 3 trial.

[Atithee]

Jay, in your calculations, are you counting the whole population to reach a target, or excluding children, say below 5 years old? Oh, you did say 332 million @25%. I think you should exclude at least 200 million from the total population.

[jayakris]

Jay, in your calculations, are you counting the whole population to reach a target, or excluding children, say below 5 years old? Oh, you did say 332 million @25%. I think you should exclude at least 200 million from the total population.

I was using the whole population. You're right that children and a lot of others under 40 years of age are hardly in any danger of deaths etc, so it's ok if they aren't inoculated. Yeah, probably an extreme calculation from me. Also, if the older population is taken care of, then deaths will substantially reduced (could even get to 1/10th of the current 1.5%), then even another big wave of Covid cases will be generally okay. Even 150 or 200 million in the next 5 months will actually be very good. But even that needs 2 or 3 times the rates that the newspapers are throwing around. A million+ a day is the absolute minimum. That is 5 times what we did on Saturday. Better get there fairly fast, and sustain it.

But if there is a strategy to inoculate super-spreaders also quickly, we could really prevent the buildup of another wave in India. I don't know who they are, but there must be data on certain kind of people. All priests and workers in church/temple/mosques/gurudwaras, all school teachers, all bus drivers, all vegetable sellers, all restaurant workers and tea-sellers, etc? If that is also done in the next 5-6 months, I think we would've beaten the virus. I mean if even 50K cases around India causes only 50 deaths in India in the next rainy season, it is not unlike a lot of other diseases we have, like the seasonal flu.

[sameerph]

What about those who already have been infected in last 6 months and have required antibodies. There will be a whole lot of them including those who were never counted in positives as they never got themselves tested.

I suppose the ideal way is for everyone who wants to get vaccinated to do an antibody test done. But I do not know if such procedure is possible.

[Atithee]

Jay, unfortunately, the rich and connected will get the vaccine first unlike the categories you mentioned. Some real and some propaganda based hesitancy will also keep the categories you mentioned away initially. Let’s see. I think India thinks the epidemic is largely over due to the low numbers we are seeing and if mask etc. have to be worn even after vaccination, people may just forego. I don’t think even a normal flu shot is as common in India as it is here in the USA. People may behave the same way for Covid shot too.

[jayakris]

What about those who already have been infected in last 6 months and have required antibodies. There will be a whole lot of them including those who were never counted in positives as they never got themselves tested.

Good point. Based on sero-surveys, anywhere from 10% to 40% of Indians may already be exposed and may have antibodies (and probably a higher fraction among superspreaders, which is a reason why we don't have a wave now). But then, they still don't know how long that immunity will last. Seems like it is at least a few months though. So who knows! The safer assumption is to target for at least 1 million shots a day for the next 150 days and hope that 150 million of them, plus a 200-300 million who already have antibodies and that it is enough to keep it out of all vulnerable people. May still get a few hundred or a couple of thousand cases every day but that is not a concern, as the deaths would be very few.

[jayakris]

Jay, unfortunately, the rich and connected will get the vaccine first unlike the categories you mentioned. Some real and some propaganda based hesitancy will also keep the categories you mentioned away initially. Let’s see. I think India thinks the epidemic is largely over due to the low numbers we are seeing and if mask etc. have to be worn even after vaccination, people may just forego. I don’t think even a normal flu shot is as common in India as it is here in the USA. People may behave the same way for Covid shot too.

Quite right about the rich vs poor angle. Don't worry as much about the rural poor though. The spread won't really get going there due to low population density. How well we will handle the urban poor is really the issue. Hopefully we will handle it well enough or at least somewhat adequately.

In any event, we are in a much better situation than almost all of the world right now, thank God - thanks to the current Covid numbers continuing to drop. All kinds of inefficiencies may be there in vaccinations, but we do have a system up and running (unlike in a lot of countries) - so if we keep at it for a few months, we may just prevent another an outbreak and a big wave of Covid. I am praying that by June or July, we just won't have to be bothered about this crap anymore.

[jayakris]

Looks like 148,266 inoculations were done today by 5 pm. That just won't do, Charlie. We are up to 381K so far. This better go up a lot more. (Not sure how it is 381K... It was 224K yesterday, and it is 148K today; so it should be 372K... Oh well; things are still in a bit flux on data reporting)

Here is the ministry report and state-wide split for those who did vaccinations today (they say a final report for the day will be done by late tonight; so we will see it tomorrow Morning in India): https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1689778

Updated my spreadsheet. Now the state-wise stats for vaccinations per million, for the bigger states are: ODI (832), KAR (823), AP (539), KER (431), TEL (376), DEL (375) at the top... TN has come up to 180 in the middle range. The bottom five are JH (155), MAH (150), RAJ (120), PUN (107), UP (95).

[jayakris]

Of course, the bad boy, Maharashtra, is at it again... They have not done any vaccinations for two days, citing some technical glitch in the national vaccine portal system. Not sure why other states don't have a problem but Maharashtra has. They said something like there needs to be a way to do paper entries or something. Some BS. The babus are probably figuring out how to insert cells in an excel spreadsheet, still... meanwhile, right on cue, Mr. Uddhav Thakare was suddenly talking about wanting Marathi speaking districts in Karnataka (Belagavi etc) to be part of Maharashtra. Oh God, give me a break. I mean, Maharashtra needs to be split into at least 2 states because it is already administratively unwieldy. And he wants more districts added. Just kicking up useless issues. As though he has all the spare time now, having set up Covid testing and vaccination so well and it is all going on swimmingly. So much spare time and no actresses' buildings are there to go bulldoze either. Must be bored. I don't know what to say. I always liked the man, or at least wanted to like the man, but he gives us no chance to like him.

[jayakris]

Can you believe that we had only a bit less than +10K cases today?... Only +9972 today... From about 705K tests at 1.42% positivity... I never thought we would go below 1.5%... Hell, I never thought we would get below 4 percent, at one point!... We had our lowest death total of 137 today too. Outside of KER (3.3K) and MAH (1.9K), we had only 4702 cases today. So hard to believe... So the 7-day average fell by another 358 to 14.7K...

With 17.1K recoveries today, our active case count fell under 200K too. It is 198K now.... Again 60% of it is in Kerala and Maharashtra. There are only 79K active cases outside those two problem states.

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ICMR Update: 187,802,827 total tests... Monday tests: 709,791... Lab count: 2339

[usaindia]

Israel may be starting to show 'herd effects' of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-may-s ... 20332.html