Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[Kumar]

I think countries will mandate vaccine for international travelers! Already qantas airlines has announced the same

I agree with you Prasen! Living in heart of red country, there is very little trust that govt (republican or democrat) will spend the tax money wisely

[jayakris]

I think countries will mandate vaccine for international travelers! Already qantas airlines has announced the same

So, if you have money and can buy an air ticket to Maldives or something, you can get vaccinated, whatever your priority for vaccination is! ... Aha!

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Meanwhile, we had +44.2K today, and conducted about 1214K tests, getting a terrific 3.65% positivity, our lowest-ever number... The highest number of tests we have done in some 35 days. Nice to see that we are not losing steam in testing. There are a handful of trouble spots (Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim) with 11+ positivity, but things are mostly looking okay for now. The 7-day average has come up to 44.2K, and should generally stay flat for the time being. Maybe minor increases or decreases, but nothing drastic for this week. At least that is my expectation.

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ICMR Update: 134,841,307 total tests... Tuesday tests: 1,159,032... Good to see the higher numbers. Lab count: 2138.

[jayakris]

For the first time, we had FIVE states testing over 90K today... UP at 179K, Bihar 132K, Karnataka 122K, Gujarat 91.5K, and Maharashtra 90.4K. Wow.

The last two are notable. Maharashtra especially. There are hints of a second wave already there, but it is too soon, and if they keep the testing up at 7% and below (it was 6.8% today) there is chance to delay things and avoid calamity. Mumbai had 1144 cases today (BMC number) but this is from 16.6K tests at 6.9% positivity. That is a whole lot different than when Mumbai used to get 1500 cases from 6K tests earlier at 25% positivity for weeks on end. What they are doing now is the level of testing needed to contain things. If they can raise it to 120K+ in Maharashtra (like Karnataka did), they can actually start taking the virus out of there too. They just might. Like I said, Uddhav and Rajesh might have finally got a clue after 8 months of slumber.

And Gujarat raised the testing back up to 90K, as that had dropped to 60K when the numbers dropped to +900 by earlier this month. Sudden increase today to 90K tests. That is great news. There is mild growth in Gujarat... and again testing is still the way to take it out.

Delhi has still not raised the total testing number much (61.8K today) but the RT-PCR ratio has increased 42% of it. That will help. Anyway, the case numbers seem to be dropping there, thankfully. "Only" +5246 today.

Haryana is showing a lot of deaths (42 today) but hopefully that is at a lag. The case numbers are hopefully starting to drop. Hopefully... Not rising badly, anyway.

But what the hell do we do with Pinarayi and Shailaja in Kerala? They tested 69K last Tuesday for 6419 cases, and tested only 66K today, again getting 6491 cases. The positivity still doesn't drop from 10%. They simply do not seem to understand that you cannot sustain a drop in the case numbers if you do not increase the testing also. The 7-day daily case average had slowly dropped from 8500 to 5500 over a 6 week period, but it is flat or is probably even increasing slightly now. Directly tied to the testing level and nothing else. STUPID state. Frankly the stupidest state in India right now, because there is no excuse for this in a place with a 100% educated and aware population.

[jayakris]

Great testing job today. 1276K tests, yielding 44.7K cases at a fabulous 3.50% positivity. Good job, India! I never thought we would see such good positivity in testing. All big states were under 10% today, for the first time. Only Himachal/Nagaland/Sikkim were over 10... Actually only KER, RAJ, WB, DEL and MAH are over even 6 percent, among the bigger 22 states.

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ICMR Update: 135,931,545 total tests... Wednesday tests: 1,090,238... Lab count: 2145

[Kumar]

Slightly disappointing news with Oxford vaccine! It looks their trial with 0.5 dose was not planned

Astrazeneca manufacturing error clouds vaccine study results

[jayakris]

Slightly disappointing news with Oxford vaccine! It looks their trial with 0.5 dose was not planned
Astrazeneca manufacturing error clouds vaccine study results

But it looks like the vaccine is effective nonetheless, but they need some more studies to determine the right quantity to administer. Basically delays (maybe a couple of months?)... They may approve a safe dose to start, and after that improve things based on more studies, I hope.
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Meanwhile, we had another excellent day of testing! ... 1260K tests at 3.43% positivity... Are you kidding me? ... We got +43.2K and our 7-day average has again started dipping, for 2 days... I think the previous few days of rise was basically because we missed a bunch of cases during the Diwali weekend and had to catch up. Nice that the testing increased right on time in many states to handle the issue. For once, ICMR and the center have been pretty quick in reacting, sending central teams last week to every problem state. The Centre generally reacted in the past too, but it was often 1 or 2 weeks too late, which didn't help. This time, most states have responded quickly to Diwali issues with increased testing. It was Maharashtra 4 days ago, raising their test total... It was Gujarat yesterday and it was Haryana today. HAR doubled their total to 66K. My jaws dropped. Yes, it may be 25K extra antigen tests they did... They may have got false negatives on 250 cases and got 250 positives, but that is still 250 bad cases (sufficient viral loads for AG) that the RT-PCR testing regime wouldn't have caught. Great job. Now Rajasthan and Kerala remain as two places that just don't seem to take any advice on testing.

For comparison of our current testing rates, look at this... When we were going up in numbers and reached +43K for the first time (around Jul 22), we were barely doing 400-450K tests and were having a positivity over 11%. Now we do three times as many tests, at 3.4% positivity. Keep it up!

[jayakris]

Though India had the second most cases behind the US, India was only 8th in the number of deaths today. USA (+180K cases) with 1306 deaths, MEX (+10K) 858, ITA (+29K) 822, BRA (+37K) 698, POL (+17K) 580, RUS (+25K) 524, UK (+18K) 498, IND (+43K) 491 .... We have seen all the explanations of there being only a smaller fraction of older people in India, some under-counting of deaths etc, but it is impressive even accounting for all that. We must have been doing a whole lot of things right in managing Covid (in my opinion).

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ICMR Update: 137,062,749 total tests... Thursday tests: 1,131,204... Lab count: 2151

[Sin Hombre]

We are obviously not as good as East Asia as far as Covid management goes but we have at least done a better job than the US and South America and large parts of Europe as well.

It helps that Indians by and large still defer to scientific authority which is not true for a lot of the Western world at this point.


The AstraZeneca results are very shaky imo.

Wired did a good piece on it
https://www.wired.com/story/the-astraze ... -to-snuff/

The 90% efficacy group was accidentally given half a dose followed by a full dose (how does this happen accidentally in a large trial and how does full full dose followed by full dose be worse) and did not include anyone above age 55.

Lots of other red flags in how they conflated data as well.

[jayakris]

Wired did a good piece on it
https://www.wired.com/story/the-astraze ... -to-snuff/

Is it only I who feel that this was a hit piece, probably pushed by the US vaccine guys? It seems to be trying to damn the Oxford vaccine and act like some really shady stuff was going on, while that may not be the case. They screwed up on multiple things on the early phase-3 trials in UK and Brazil, and the evidence is all fully inconclusive now. AstraZeneca vaccine is simply not ready for approval by anybody at this point, and we will have to wait for further results from ongoing studies like in India and other places. But studies are going on, so we wait. The article seems to imply, without saying it, that there is something wrong with the vaccine itself though. Am I right?

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Meanwhile, we only had +41.3K today, and that was from 1222K tests at 3.38% ... So the positivity again dropped. The 7-day average of cases dropped by about 700 too but half of the drop was because Kerala did not test enough (what is new? The idiots only did 39K today and found some 1500 less than they should have, at 10.1% positivity -- the excuse was that it was Bharat bandh. Whatever that is, the rest of Bharat seemed hardly affected).

[jayakris]

S. Korea just had +583 and +569 the last two days - their highest since March 5th. Their second peak was only at +440 in August, and now the third peak is officially bigger than the second. No big country of 50+ million population has been able to really keep the virus totally out... Except China, but we don't know what the heck goes on there. My student from China says that there are tons more of cases there than they report. No idea how much more.

For comparison, Andhra Pradesh, of roughly the same population as S. Korea (about 50 million) had +733 today, but that was from 57K tests at 1.3% positivity... Korea's 569 came from about 21K tests at 2.7% positivity - so AP is doing so much better in testing than Korea. But of course, AP is at the bottom of the curve after a peak, and S. Korea is going towards a peak now. So they are not really comparable. But it is good to see that our testing levels are pretty high right now. That will only help us. I noticed many countries' testing numbers go down a lot after their peak when the numbers fell. But ours did not. That is certainly nice!

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ICMR Update: 138,220,354 total tests... Friday tests: 1,157,605... Lab count: 2161

[jayakris]

+41.2K from 1242K tests at 3.36% today. The 7-day moving average again dipped for the 4th day... Looks like we are back to dropping numbers, though at a pretty low rate of a couple of thousands a week.

Basically, Kerala, West Bengal, and Delhi refuse to test more... Rather they are allowing more infections to happen from people unaware of having it, thus delaying and slowing down the drop in case numbers... That too, when a drastic drop is very much there for the taking, if they would only test a bit more with AG tests or RT-PCR or Feluda or whatever. WB needs to add just 10-15K more tests to the 45K they do, and Kerala needs to add 20 or 25K more tests to the 60K they do. Eminently doable, and many states have shown it. Even doing it for 3 or 4 days would help tremendously, as clearly shown by places like Jharkhand and Assam. But KER and WB (and maybe RAJ) won't do any of that. So, for now, wait for the numbers to come down only very slowly in Kerala and West Bengal. But no serious concerns for now.

Not seeing any humongous (or actually ANY) problems after the Diwali celebrations, so far... But wait for a few days more to say it for sure though.

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ICMR Update: 139,503,803 total tests (India just went over 100K tests per million population)... Saturday tests: 1,283,449 ... I think the states will show something less tomorrow, as ICMR is catching up on some tests done this week. Lab count: 2164

[jayakris]

We only had +39.1K today, and that was from 1270K tests at 3.08% positivity... The testing numbers being reported are ridiculous these days, eccept from Kerala, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Delhi and HP... Haryana did 127K tests today! Actually I took the 95K reported by Jharkhand as a typo, and counted only 15K from there today (Otherwise, it would be 1350K tests at 2.89% positivity!).

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ICMR Updates: 140,379,976 total tests... Sunday tests: 876,173... Lab count : 2165

[jayakris]

Another day of great testing and a drop (by Monday standards)... Just +31.1K today, from 1002K tests at 3.11%... The seven-day average dipped nicely for a 6th day in a row, so it looks like we are in a downward trajectory again for the time being... Hope it stays on for a long time. Right now, it doesn't look like Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and MP that showed signs of a second wave, are catching fire our anything. Some may be dropping again. Let's wait and see. Unsure of HP, though they may be at a peak and may not rise much. WB is clearly on a down-trend now. Kerala and Delhi are on slow down slopes.

Does anybody know what is going on in Turkey? They had 31.2K cases, more than even India, today. Take a look at their case graph. -- https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ry/turkey/ Can you explain what is up with the last few days? .... [EDIT: Ha! It turns out that Erdogan was only reporting those being treated and not those turning positive -- AP article... They suddenly changed the reporting to what everybody else were reporting; and sudden;ly Turkey is the worst hit part of the world. This is all becoming fairly ridiculous!]

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ICMR Update: 141,349,298 total tests... Monday tests: 969,322 ... A bit lower than expected for a Tuesday. Lab count: 2170

[prasen9]

Erdogan being Erdogan.

[jayakris]

Erdogan being Erdogan.

Haha. Exactly what I thought too

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So, we had only +36.5K cases today, which was surprisingly low for a Tuesday. The 7-day average dropped to 39.6K which is near our lowest. The tests were a bit down but we still had 1113K at 3.28% positivity. No serious issues identified, except HP getting a few more deaths than expected. They are having issues there, and the testing is not rising in Himachal. It is still less than 800 to 1000 new infections a day, which is a lot for a small state nonetheless. Delhi seems to be dropping faster than I expected but Kerala is dropping even slower than I expected too.

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ICMR Update: 1,424,45,949 total tests... Tuesday tests: 1,096,651... Lab count: 2172