Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

Kujo! You were around? Good to see you.

[jayakris]

+155 in UP. A robust 4 percent growth in the state. Cases are spread all around the state, as they test at a high rate there. Good to see that. Agra had +9 today, and has been totally quiet for a few days. The Agra model does work. Heck any model works. Have a clue about even having a model, Mumbai and Maharashtra!!!

+3718 to 85,776. Not yet final. Waiting for ODI numbers. PUN hasn't given an update either. Probably less than +20 there, based on recent rates.

[jayakris]

Jay the theory on Bengal not testing the minority areas may be right.

Well, it looks like you may be right that I may be right ...

This article in The Hindu (subscription recommended), says: "The State’s Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim said that while it was encouraging that the number of cases was decreasing, more and more cases are coming from high-rise buildings of the city". The article also says that "163 deaths are due to the coronavirus and 72 due to co-morbidities', where COVID-19 was the 'incidental finding'".

They are happily going and getting cool drinks and rasagola from high-rise dwellers, having nice chit-chat about missing Saurav Ganguli in the cricket team, collecting lots of samples, and finding 2% positivity. They do some tests when poor people die, and Covid among them is an "incidental finding".

Oh, brother...

[jayakris]

The Hindu's 11 pm update on MAH testing numbers. "2,50,436 samples have been tested in Maharashtra of which 2,21,336 (more than 90%) have returned negative while 29,100 have tested positive". It was 240,145 yesterday. So, 10,291. Argh. I need 15K. Now!

I can only quote the great Madonna

"The truth is never far behind; You kept it hidden well
If I live to tell the secret I knew then, will I...
ever have the chance again?
If I ran away, I'd never have the strength to go very far
How would they hear the beating of my heart
Will it grow cold, the secret that I hide, will I grow old
How will they hear?
When will they learn?
How will they know?"

[jayakris]

Looks like we may not get Odisha and Punjab numbers today, so I'm going to take +3,736 to 85,784 as today's number. The growth was only 4.55% today. That is a doubling period of 15.6 days. Very good.

+104 deaths, so the death rate today was 2.78%. Our overall death rate falls to 3.21% ... There were 2,277 recoveries today, which gives a nice recovery-to-new ratio of 38-to-72. At 30,258 recoveries, our overall recovery rate is 35.3% now.

Today's bad areas: [Population in brackets]

+1191 (5.7%) to 21925 (+933+167+65+26 to 17671+3499+392+363) in Mumbai/Thane/Raigad/Palghar (MMR), MAH [26M]
+425 (5.1%) to 8805 in Delhi [19M]
+310 (5.5%) to 5947 in Chennai [7M]
+212 (6.4%) to 3499 in Pune, MAH [9M]
+85 (9.1%) to 1024 (+62+23 to 778+246) in Aurangabad/Jalgaon, MAH [7M]
+70 (4.2%) to 1736 (+43+27 to 1200+536) in Kolkata/Howrah, WB [9.5M]
+59 (21%) to 337 in "Other states category" and "BSF" from a few states.
+48 (18%) to 318 in Kota, RAJ [2M]


No other had more than a +45 with 4% growth (so Ahmedabad with +261 at 3.77%, Indore with +69 at 2.7%, etc, are all out of the "bad places" group) ... These few bad areas had 2400 cases to take their tally to 43,591 at bad-area growth rate of 5.83%. The rest of India had only 1336 cases to take their tally to 42,193 at a good-area growth rate of just 3.27%. (not that the rest of India here includes even Gujarat)

To put this in perspective, half of our cases are in areas with a total population of 79.5 million which is six percent of India's population. One state and 2 other cities basically. The rest of India with 94% population had cases that grew at a 3.3% rate. 80 percent of our population are probably still not within even 5 km of an infected person! Think about that....

[jayakris]

Revisiting my predictions from over 3 weeks ago on Apr 23rd when we were at around 20K, and a couple of earlier look-backs....

My 3-week April 23rd predictions (which I had looked back at, in two posts here, a week ago on May 3rd) are still holding up quite well.

My summary April 23rd summary:

Another way to summarize what I said above - we better not be doubling at any rate more than once in 7 or 8 days right now. I don't want to see 50K earlier than May 1st and 100K earlier than May 10th. If we are at 100K on May 10th, we are verging on to serious trouble territory. If we are close to 200K on May 15th, watch out. Hell would've already broken loose everywhere (like 50K in Mumbai, 20K in Pune/PCMC, 25K in Ahmedabad, and 5 to 10K in several cities). In 3 weeks time. I hope that won't be the case. Hopefully we will only see 40% of such numbers on May 15th for an 80K total.

I don't think we are going in those troublesome directions. Basically doing a tad bit better than I thought. I am still sticking to 65K, or may raise it to 70K max for May 10th. Not more than 100K on May 15th. Probably 85K-90K. I know, I shouldn't predict what might happen after the next week or so.

I had said 45K for May 3rd (and we were at 46K), and 65K for May 10th (we are at 67K today). My existing 12-day advance prediction is for about 85K-90K for May 15th. With 5 days to go, my guess is still under 90K for May 15th.
...
I am hoping for something under 100K by next Sunday, May 17th. I will make a not-so-confident prediction of 140K to 145K by May 24th, and about 190K to 210K for May 31st.

We hit the 85-90K prediction for today, closer to 85K. We won't be much above 95K on Sunday May 17th. We are going pretty close to my most optimistic scenarios above, despite all the mess going on in Mumbai, and despite the unforeseen Koyambedu flare-up. That is nice!

[jayakris]

Meanwhile, Maharashtra is giving the impression of having given up. They are just going to do the best they can with hospital care, hoping for the peak to come in late June, which somehow some mathematical models are telling them will be the peak.

Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra likely to peak by June-end, says health minister

God save us, if their mathematical projections are wrong. I wonder what testing/tracing/quarantining rate they are using in the models.

Rajesh Tope says he is expecting Mumbai to double twice by late June to 60K cases. Is he joking? That means a doubling period of 20 days to go to the peak? Hell, nobody has gone to the peak at that rate, man! Are they just simply looking at the current false rate of 5% increase and expecting it to keep reducing to 3.5 percent to get a 20-day doubling? That false rate now is simply from not testing people!! No kind of 20-day doubling is going to happen, if you are showing 30% positivity in your tests. Not in our cities (maybe it can happen in some countries with educated people who just start to take care of business themselves, but even that I have not seen).

A more probable eventuality is that true infections, which may already be over 40K in Mumbai, will double at the rate of 10 or 12 days and go up to 200K cases in 40 days by late June. Testing and all that will basically be only in hospitals when they arrive by the truckloads. Then it will probably stabilize and drop at a very slow rate for 2 months after that to half its peak arrivals per day. This will probably start in 10 or 15 days from now. You are about to see a New York in Mumbai, if you ask me.

It is not the time to give up. Mumbai has only one way out. And that is to test, track and find 30K to 50K people to quarantine in the next 10-15 days. Still possible, but may be too late to even try. 10 days ago when I asked, it could've been done by finding 15K or 20K people with 150K tests by now in the last 10 days. Instead they screwed around and probably did 35K tests (if even that)

Gosh. Idiots, idiots, idiots.....

[prasen9]

Brazil had 800+ dead in a day and little Ecuador had over 250. That is bad. Corona is breaking bad in S. America now. Of course, U.S. had what 1300 or so in a day

[kujo]

Kujo! You were around? Good to see you.

Catching up after a break - good to see your hourly updates!! thanks for keeping track of this....

[jayakris]

Brazil had 800+ dead in a day and little Ecuador had over 250. That is bad. Corona is breaking bad in S. America now. Of course, U.S. had what 1300 or so in a day

That is what happens if you don't test and quarantine. They went too long with 15 and 20% positivity, and now it is getting to 25% in Brazil and some 35% in Ecuador, which means they are basically just testing only the SARI patients coming to the hospital and have no measures in place to reduce the spread, having no idea of containment zones or anything. They just don't have hospital facilities or ventilators to keep people alive, so 10 to 15% of the people who reached hospital a week ago are dying. Ten times more people that should die. Just horrible.

If what Hindusthan Times was right in what they said about Mumbai showing 33% positivity lately, then Mumbai is in their category now, in testing. But it is very recent, because I think they were testing at 15% positivity till at least 10 days ago. Mumbai is still showing only 4% deaths, but who knows what it will be a few days later if they have already stopped catching, testing and quarantining people over the last few days (seeing the test numbers, again)? [EDIT: But then again, the death rate is not always correlated to test positivity. It is, to some extent, but hospital capacity also matters. Hopefully Mumbai will keep the death rate under 5% even if the case numbers keep mounting]

[prasen9]

Throw in Mexico 257 and Peru 135 or so. S. America is even more "chalta hai" than us. And, Brazil is led by a total idiot. Today's leaders are the U.S., Brazil, and the U.K. in daily deaths. Three countries led by bozos.

[jayakris]

Throw in Mexico 257 and Peru 135 or so. S. America is even more "chalta hai" than us. And, Brazil is led by a total idiot. Today's leaders are the U.S., Brazil, and the U.K. in daily deaths. Three countries led by bozos.

True. I wouldn't say that we have been "chalta hai," though. Unless you mean the people. People have been chalta hai about it, seeing the latest crowd pictures with too many people not wearing masks. But our governments have not been. The central government and governments of all but two states have not at all been "chalta hai" at all about it. They have taken it as seriously as any government out there in the world. Nobody was arguing about whether the virus is a hoax or any boneheaded crap, like in much of the crazy world. Not even much of the religion-driven bullshit about it. Our governments don't get everything right, but they have all been trying. That has been a very pleasant surprise to me, this time around. But two states, one in particular, are making it really stressful on us.

[rajitghosh]

Just a contrarian view here on Maharashtra and Gujarat. Maybe we need to give them the benefit of doubt. They have been hit badly compared to most other states except Tamil Nadu and Delhi. With the nature of cities in these regions like the slums of Bombay or the old city of Ahmedabad it is difficult to contain a disease. Contact tracing may not even be practically possible. There are certain other states that have just been lucky like Telangana and Karnataka. A natural what-if scenario would be if the virus had hit the old city of Hyderabad. Maybe Telangana was plain lucky. Delhi may have been lucky because it is not as congested as Bombay. Same for Chennai that in spite of TJ and Koyambedu the spread could be arrested. The more I look at this disease I am convinced that prolonged exposure to it in congested places is the only way it spreads. That way Bengal has been either pure lucky or something worse may be round the corner.
Where Bombay may have missed a trick was getting people out from the slums into mass quarantine. Again doubtful whether that is practically possible. In such a scenario migrants leaving may be the best scenario. If a few lakh go out it straight away eases the pressure on the slums. Let us hope for the best.

[jayakris]

You are assuming too many places to have had luck. Not really. I don't think Agra or Ramgunj in Jaipur are any less congested than Maharashtrian cities like Thane and Nashik and all that. Just look at all those place growing at 11% rate even now. Maybe Dharavi is a special kind of slum (and Dharavi only has 1000 cases after all this talk). But nothing in India is as bad a calamity as Koyambedu was. 5 times the numbers of cases found in one week and tested than Mumbai has found in Dharavi after all this talk for the last month. Bullshit. Nothing less.

There is nothing too different in Maharashtra compared to the industrial belt around delhi that goes into 2-3 other states. They all handled it. And Mumbai never had any single big breakout event either. Mumbai has been VERY lucky. And the officials VERY clueless.

When you get a case, you need to find 7 to 10 others to test. That is not that hard, because everybody has 3 or 4 in the family to start with. Then you give them instructions on what to do and test them a week later (plain photocopies of what to do, or just simply saying they will die if they pick their nose, is enough).

This is happening because of pure cluelessness on what to do. And stubborn ego issues or whatever, in talking to so many people in the country who are doing so much work, who can give them a clue. Maharashtrians deserve better than the BS government machinery they have.

If I see ONE person, just one person, from Maharashtra officialdom saying something insightful about tracing and testing in the state, I am willing to stop criticizing. Till then I will keep this harangue going, though none of them are seeing it

Nothing can explain testing rates going down in Mumbai, other than plain idiocy.

[jayakris]

Oh good.. Here is some good news - CM ropes in ministers to contain virus (subscription may be needed)
The ministers and MLAs etc are being put in charge of areas. About time! The minority affairs minister Nawab Malik, for instance, has been assigned Govandi, Mankhurd and Shivaji Nagar. He says "14,857 people from 2,592 homes in the areas assigned to him were screened on Friday". He also said that mass screening like this may lead to a rise in cases but it is a good thing, as they will get treated early. [Did I just hear the ONE person who said something insightful from Mumbai, that I asked for, in the post above? ]

I am like a kid in a candy store. Do we see 1500 positives in a couple of days, sir? I will applaud you. And Uddhav, for doing this. How I wish thse things were done like 4 weeks ago when there were hardly 2000 cases in Mumbai.

Apparently, involving the political class was another suggestion from the central team that visited a few a days ago.