Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[Atithee]

Interesting take on Indian corona spread vs. its neighbors:

https://scroll.in/article/972694/corona ... than-india

[jayakris]

^^ Thanks! Very good article, but I am not sure if any of those things really can explain the substantial difference in how things have gone in India.

Meanwhile, we had a relatively calm day today with a slightly lower growth, and +97.6K cases... The tests reported by the states were slightly higher at 1155K, and we had the same positivity as yesterday, at 8.45%... It needs to improve. We are running at 250K tests below where we need to be, right now.

The states doing frustrating sleep-walking on testing right now: Kerala, Uttarakhand, Goa, MP and CHG. Of these, the CHG and UK situation need to be addressed or things can get out of hand really fast. The good news is that Jharkhand seems to have really got thing sunder control with those 150K AG tests last week that caught a lot of cases in a hurry. But they need to keep raising the tests now or it will catch on again. Delhi is currently doing a great job too, as Kejriwal woke up and decided to do something.

AP seems to have fully calmed down everywhere. Nice. It took a long while. The active cases numbers have been dropping for a few days now.

Karnataka really needs to test better. They are on a waiting game, I guess. They are like, "hey, we are doing 14% testing. Maharashtra does 25% and brings in 2.5 times out cases, and nobody complains. Maybe we can get away with this". Really. Argh.

[jayakris]

ICMR Update: 55,189,226 total tests... Friday tests: 1,091,251... Not good. That is 300K less than I wanted. Lagging in testing again, which means our positivity is getting ready to go back up to 9 and 10% soon. Yikes. Lab Count: 1705

[jayakris]

AP stays below 10K and has had drops in active cases in 7 of the last 9 days. TN has had drops in active cases for 11 days now. I guess that is good news. Will take any good news.

But the testing situation in Goa, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand are getting very serious. Goa is the worst, testing at 30% positivity, and now exploding. They had 740 cases today in Goa.

MP had 39 deaths today. It's playing with fire if the Centre doesn't ask Chauhan to move his behind and do something. Just 23K tests in MP won't do, when you get 10% positivity, Mostly RT-PCR though. Need to do AG tests there on a mass scale rightaway like in Bihar and Jharkhand, or we will see MP with 10K cases in 3 weeks time and it will go on for 2 months. No excuse for BJP state governments to be allowed to mess around. Maybe they can't do a whole lot about the others.

[suresh]

#worldometerwatch

India is number 1 in the number of daily cases added and daily deaths.

[jayakris]

^^ But we have been #1 for quite a few days now, right? (for a couple of weeks on daily cases, and at least a week in daily deaths, maybe?)

That by itself is no big deal or a surprise, when we think about it. We have 4 times the population of the #2 country, so the miracle is that it took this long, and that our deaths per million is so low even now, after all this!.... There ios the positive spin

I am only worried about when we will get a drop. We don't want to see this damn thing drag on for more than a month or two more without a peak and a drop.

[jayakris]

What the hell was the centre's team doing in Chattisgarh, after they were "rushed" down there last week? It's infuriating to see Chattisgarh to have done just 16K tests today, getting 3100 cases. When will somebody take care of their job there? Deaths are going to pile up there in a few weeks, and we will easily go up to 10K cases per day in no time. Mark my words. Idiots in Delhi and even more idiots in Raipur.

Otherwise, this was a good day all around, and we had a drop to 94.5K... Not all because of lower testing.. I notice quite a lot of areas where things have quickly calmed down... But, as in the last so many days, Chhattisgarh is always there to totally screw our happiness at the end of the day at 11 pm.

EDIT. We finished with 94.4K today.... A drop, after so many days of rises. Finally. But here is really the good news. We did more tests today too. About 1068K reported by the states, compared to 1055K yesterday. And this happened despite Bihar and UP reducing their tests (by about 25K), and it is many other states that increased the testing by about a 4% today (that is always good, if it is not those two states with excellent testing numbers who raise the tests!)... Take a look at today's updates for state-wise positivity numbers and today's summary for bad-area analysis.

So our positivity again dropped to 8.0% today, after it had gone up to 8.5% in the last few days. The death numbers were also better in many states. MP and Punjab are the ones that are a concern now on the death matter (and all these comments are taking out Maharashtra because we have all given up on that state).

[jayakris]

ICMR Update: 56,260,928 total tests... Saturday tests: 1,071,702... Wanted to see more, but if the positivity is good like today, okay... Lab count: 1711

[jayakris]

It doesn't look like there is a big increase anywhere today, except in Uttarakhand, which we knew was coming, seeing the terrible testing rates lately. UK has almost doubles in the last week to 1600+ ... But AP is clearly showing a fall, which is nice to see. UP also showed a nice drop along with a drop in positivity...

The second waves are in full swing in Punjab and Madhya Pradesh and both states are testing at 10% now. Terrible .... Haryana also has a serious second wave going, and they are testing at 9 percent too, like Kerala. There is no way there will be any end to our problems if these states that had done well all along mess up like this.

Chattisgarh did just 12.5K tests to find 2200 cases at 18% positivity.

Absolutely horrendous testing numbers today from every damn troubled state. With the exception of Jharkhand, not one bad state has taken care of business with proper testing in the last week or two (Punjab, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh). Horrendously stupid. Telangana, UP, Bihar, WB, Gujarat, Rajasthan, TN, Delhi, J&K and Assam are doing their part very well in testing, along with Jharkhand. That is, 11 of the 21 bigger states are doing just fine, and 9 are screwing up right now. AP survived after screwing up for so long - so I don't know which category to put them under.

Not expecting any good news in the next 2-3 weeks if these 9 states remain stupid like this. If India wants to take care of business and begin to get an upper hand on the pandemic, it can be done now with some enhanced testing. But there is no indication that Modiji is paying attention and doing what is needed to force some of these stupid states to get that job done.

EDIT: We finished with another drop in the daily total to 93.2K today... The states reported about 1120K tests and we got a positivity around 8.3% ... Not as bad as I thought it was, actually. I see a lot of districts beginning to show noticeable drops in cases, in many states. Keep your fingers crossed.

[jayakris]

Revisiting my predictions from 2 weeks ago (Aug 30), which was checked and revised in my post last Sunday (Sep 6):

New 14-day prediction for Sunday, Sep 13 is 4.750M to 4.800M

Raising my predictions for next Sunday, Sep 13, to 4.850M to 4.880M
New 14-day prediction for Sunday, Sep 20 is 5.550M to 5.600M

We fell just below my lower end prediction, with 4.845M for today..
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

[PKBasu]

I think this is the first time there has been a decline in new cases on Saturday and Sunday in about 8 weeks. Slightly hopeful sign, as Monday usually sees a dip pretty much every week.

[jayakris]

^^^ Yes, PKB, it is actually a good sign. There are quite a few areas/districts all over the country that show numbers that are falling rather sharply, but I am reluctant to predict anything because I know that second waves can start in many of the calm states (MP, WB, GUJ, etc) and add big numbers any time. Have seen that enough times so far. We have a quite a few areas where infection per population is not too high even now, though we have a lot of areas where it is high enough to cause a drop in numbers because super-spreader damage is all already done (both super-spreader people and super-spreader events/locations). Plus, the 8 or so states with testing deficiency need to take care of business or in 1 or 2 weeks any of those places can add 10K a day like happened in AP and KAR out of the blue 2 and 3 months ago (Kerala with high population density and a very active population certainly can, and I am really worried about my home state right now)... So, yeah, good signs are there but things are all very tenuous, so let us keep our fingers crossed.

-----
ICMR update: 57,239,428 total tests... Sunday tests: 978,500... I would expect around 1000 to 1050K tests reported by the states on Monday, and probably 85K or so minimum. Lab count: 1717

[jayakris]

An update - Maharashtra testing 5 high-risk and 10 low-risk contacts per patient (Times of India)

Can anybody make sense of these numbers they report? The article title is clearly wrong because they are NOT testing anywhere near that many, based on the test numbers we know. The positivity is 25%, which basically means that they are testing at most about 3 extra people per positive. But they say definitively that they are tracing 10+ people per positives? The people quoted aren't saying that they tested them all, and it doesn't look like they are lying about the tracing numbers either - since they are quoting district-wise stats. So it means that they are tracing all these people using the Aaarogya Setu app, but aren't trying to get them tested at all?

When they say they "traced", it means they contacted the people (say by phone), right? Otherwise, there is no point in saying they traced, I suppose... Anybody can do it on their computer and it doesn't mean anything. So if you are actually contacting them, why not ask them to go get AG tests done, damnit? Let people know if they are infected, early enough. It is asinine to not ask them to get tested if the officials are taking the trouble to trace and contact them. Idiotic, isn't it?

[rajitghosh]

No tracing done in my society where a dozen cases were found.

[jayakris]

No tracing done in my society where a dozen cases were found.

Do you know that none of the family members were contacted, or asked to get tested? Were these AG tests, in which case they may have been told on the spot? I am curious how they do these things. No standard procedure recommended by ICMR (which has been the biggest issue in India, in my opinion).

Meanwhile, this - Maharashtra CM launches ‘My Family, My Responsibility’ campaign. After 30K deaths, now he does this. Laugh or cry?