Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

We had +18.4K today, which is a slight bit higher than on last Saturday, so our weekly average did not drop today, for the first time in 45 days... It went up a tad bit from 17,740 to 17,744... Today's cases were from about 1055K tests at 1.74% positivity.

-----
ICMR update: 181,096,622 total tests... Saturday tests: 843,307... A bit lower for my liking; not yet time for this to reduce... lab count: 2318

[Omkara]

This won't go any where you Maharashtra and Kerala come under control. I am of to Goa. May the power of heaven which protects all stupidities Indians did, may also protect me.

[Sin Hombre]

I am in India now and most of the country seems to be over Covid. Hopefully we can vaccinate enough people before a second wave flares up.

[suresh]

^ This is what I have been saying for a while now.

[Kumar]

Just my guess. Say, when the people register for vaccination, I assume they will be asked "if Covidshield is not available, are you willing to take Covaxin that has ICMR's preliminary safety approval, and be part of its phase-III trial on its efficacy?".. Would people say yes? Only very very few, but some just might, and those numbers can add up. Now, assume they offer something like "if you agree, you can recommend another person not in the priority group to get vaccinated too".... Then some more people might take a shot at getting the vaccination, as their wife or son or somebody else can also get vaccinated early. Maybe... [But offering money would be unethical, of course

Well, it all depends on how the registration happens right! Are vast majority of people savvy enough to understand the risks and the wordings on this! We have challenging few months ahead of us!

Here in US, JJ reduced their trial participants from 600000 to 40000! There is talk of just giving one dose of all available vaccines with new admin(UK is already doing that) ! On one hand, it will bring down the vaccine efficiency to say 50% and potentially provide a pathway for the vaccine resistant strain to form quickly !

[usaindia]

life more normal
https://twitter.com/Telugu360/status/13 ... 6787135494

[jayakris]

Well, it all depends on how the registration happens right! Are vast majority of people savvy enough to understand the risks and the wordings on this! We have challenging few months ahead of us!

That is what I am guessing too. It all depends on how the registration happens. It is quite complicated to do it right in the manner I was saying. So chances are that the health department will screw it up and the critics will be proven right!

[jayakris]

Only +16.5K today, so we continue the holding pattern on the 7-day average at around 17.0K... From about 998K tests, so the positivity was best ever at 1.65% today. No issues, except that Maharashtra still generates 3000+ cases and Kerala around 5000... No big change in those two places. Kerala administration should be ashamed of themselves for letting this go on. 100% because of poor testing. At both these places - Maharashtra and Kerala. Particularly Kerala. If the wretched mandarins of these states could do about 30 to 50% more tests for even a week or two (Kerala close to 80K and MAH close to 95K), this crap would've ended long ago. We have states like UP, Bihar and Karnataka who have done it for months and even Assam and Jharkhand did it for so many days when needed. Delhi raised the numbers by just about 40% per day and the thing ended in a hurry there. The results are there, plain as daylight, to see. But the idiot administrators still don't see any of that. None of them seem to even look at what other states are doing. Frustrating... But then I've been a broken record on this for months... Oh well.

For good news, our death total was +150 today, the lowest total in 7.5 months, since May 25th. Wow. There were days earlier when Maharashtra alone had more than three times as many deaths on many days! 515 was the state's max total, IIRC... In fact, Maharashtra had more deaths than this total on almost all days for almost 4 months, and MAH's average over the whole period is about 170 per day. But there were only 34 deaths recorded in Maharashtra today.

---------
ICMR Update: 181,755,831 total tests... Sunday tests: 659,209... That is the lowest we have seen in a long time... lab count: 2319

[jayakris]

Only +12.5K on Monday, which is at least a 1000 less than expected even for a Monday. About 1700 less than the last Monday, so we continue the drops. The 7-day average fell by 241 to 17.5K... Gujarat has not given test numbers for a couple of days for some reason, but excluding the 615 cases from Gujarat, we had about 11.9K from about 816K tests at a 1.53% positivity!

---------
ICMR Update: 182,652,887 total tests... Monday tests: 897,056... Lab count: 2322

[sameerph]

Putting in this thread instead of badminton thread. Saina Nehwal, her husband Kashyap and HS Prannoy were tested positive in Thailand based on RTPCR tests and were withdrawn from the Thailand open where they were supposed to play today.

Later on conducting anto body tests, it was found that they were shown falsely negative in earlier reports. They will play now tomorrow.

A bit perplexed by all this. Saina and Prannoy had earlier tested positive too in India a couple of months ago. So, it was a surprise in first place that tested positive again so soon. Now, it turns out that RT PCR test result was false.

I have heard a few cases like these earlier too. So, are these RT PCR tests really reliable? What are the chances of false positives?

[jayakris]

I have heard a few cases like these earlier too. So, are these RT PCR tests really reliable? What are the chances of false positives?

I think there is some 2 or 3 percent false positives that happen with RT-PCR and I believe it also depends on the number of cycles they run the machine. More cycles increases the chance for some false positives; something like that... Antigen tests seem to show slightly more false positives but not too bad.

But antigen tests may miss out on actual cases and may give as much as 40 or 45% false negatives (but the near-symptomactic cases do get picked up by AG)... But false negatives are also less that 5 percent, with RT-PCR. That is why they prefer RT-PCR.

[jayakris]

Only +16.0K today, which is really good for a Tuesday. About 2000 less than last week, again... So the drop continues, with a -286 in the seven-day average, to 17.2K.... Gujarat did not give a test number for the third day in a row... Weird. They were always reporting over 45K or so and seemed to have the testing fully under control... May have found spreadsheet errors?... Anyway, taking out Gujarat and the +602 cases, we did about 931K tests for a 1.64% positivity.... 202 deaths today... Kerala is stuck at about +5050 on seven-day average for about 11 days now, but the positivity is inching down (to 8.5 today), which is a sign that a faster drop in case numbers is about to come soon. Maybe in a few days. Keeping my fingers crossed.

---------------
ICMR Update: 183,489,114 total tests... Tuesday tests: 836,227

[sameerph]

I have heard a few cases like these earlier too. So, are these RT PCR tests really reliable? What are the chances of false positives?

I think there is some 2 or 3 percent false positives that happen with RT-PCR and I believe it also depends on the number of cycles they run the machine. More cycles increases the chance for some false positives; something like that... Antigen tests seem to show slightly more false positives but not too bad.

But antigen tests may miss out on actual cases and may give as much as 40 or 45% false negatives (though the near-symptomactic cases do get picked up by AG)... But false negatives are also less that 5 percent, with RT-PCR. That is why they prefer RT-PCR.

Ok, thanks. In this case, clarification came from BWF that Saina and Prannoy were still positive on RT PCR tests but their antibody tests also turned out positive. So, that RT PCR positive may be from dead virus they says as they were infected a month ago. So, organisers decided to let them play.

[Atithee]

This is a dangerous precedent.

[jayakris]

This is a dangerous precedent.

What is it that you're referring to, Atithee?