Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

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suresh
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by suresh »

In Chennai private companies charge >= 900 rupees for RTPCR tests. I don't know if there rates lower than that. It is not a good thing that Kerala has fixed the rate to be 500 rupees -- clearly there is no incentive for a private hospital/lab to do the test with no margin. Just doing a rethink on that number -- even 700 rupees might make them restart. Another option for Kerala would be to increase the number of government labs that do RTPCR tests. It is good to see that Maharashtra is going to increase the number of RTPCR tests.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by suresh »

TN gives out district wise positivity rates!

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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by jayakris »

suresh wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 2:37 pm In Chennai private companies charge >= 900 rupees for RTPCR tests. I don't know if there rates lower than that. It is not a good thing that Kerala has fixed the rate to be 500 rupees -- clearly there is no incentive for a private hospital/lab to do the test with no margin. Just doing a rethink on that number -- even 700 rupees might make them restart. Another option for Kerala would be to increase the number of government labs that do RTPCR tests.
Very much so. The price issue that Times of India mentioned was critical. I have so far seen only that one article that has identified the issue so precisely and pointed it out.

But nothing will change in Godforsaken Kerala. First the state needs to realize that there is a problem with their testing regime. Not going to happen. We are talking about the most clueless 100% literate state in the world. The government is run by incompetent fools, who are voted in by people who are brainwashed and misinformed like nowhere else in the world, and the and states departments are run by idiot bureaucrats who are appointed to their posts by the above fools only for their skills in smoke and mirrors voodoo to misinform the public.

Meanwhile, the Malayalam newspapers have spent two days highlighting how stupid the Central Government was when they said that there were no oxygen deaths reported by the states. The last part is conveniently dropped by the newspapers, of course.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by Kumar »

Suresh. Did they change the price recently? I paid 1200 for rt-pcr in April
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by Atithee »

On Kerala testing:

Complete lockdown in Kerala on July 23-24; mass testing campaign with target of 3 lakh tests per day ordered

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/kera ... red/788265
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by jayakris »

Will anybody do something about the Indian press being constantly played by the "experts" in Kerala who keep creating stories? Check this out.

Serosurvey points to threat if third Covid wave strikes Kerala (The New Indian Express)

It is a whole article that a couple of experts fooled the newspaper into publishing, that makes it look like the latest sero-prevalence survey shows Kerala to still be having less disease spread. That may be right, but that report on the latest national sero-prevalence survey is not out. These Malayalees estimated what can be expected in that report, and have gone on with bullshit. It took me some very careful reading to figure out that the whole story is without ANY new data.

It's amazing how much of numbers-acrobatics are done by all these experts in Kerala, who want it all to sound like "hey, this is all normal. we are just smart people who delayed the spread and do such a great job of managing it. all we need is to keep a lockdown going". Not a soul will point fingers at the utter incompetence of the state machinery.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by jayakris »

Atithee wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 4:26 pm On Kerala testing:
Complete lockdown in Kerala on July 23-24; mass testing campaign with target of 3 lakh tests per day ordered
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/kera ... red/788265
More lies from the state Government. Yeah right. They are going to do 600K in two days. We heard this last week, and we got 30K extra tests on Thu/Fri. They said the results would come over the "coming days" but the days never came.

But again Kerala managed to make people believe that they did some mass testing last week. See this Hindu article that says there was mass testing last week, and even talks about specific results from that testing. A total lie, but The Hindu published that. Does anybody check anything? It is incredible what is going on in Kerala with the fooling-the-public campaign.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by Kumar »

Jai, the strategy of Kerala govt can be summed up

We are honest, everyone is else lying
We did so well during the first wave, that we have not reached herd immunity even now!


Unfortunately, there will be a new wave in rest of India and Kerala and Maharashtra with lower number will be pointed out as model states to follow

I really don’t trust these serosurvey! There is no way 67% of India has antibodies as of June-July. US is reporting just 20% as of May 20121.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by suresh »

Kumar wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 3:59 pm Suresh. Did they change the price recently? I paid 1200 for rt-pcr in April
I have seen rates upward of 900 rupees quoted by different labs. No fixed rate for private labs. I heard of some scam in Hyderabad airport where people paid 4K for a test.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by jayakris »

So we had +34.9K on Thursday, from about 1938K tests @ 1.80% ... Pretty good drop of 601 in the 7-day average, after 5 flat days, to 37621... Some 4000 less than expected. About 2500 is due to fewer tests in Kerala and Maharashtra, but there was also an actual 1700 drop in the Northeast states and ODI/AP without much drop in testing... The deaths were 481.

A good day of vaccinations, as we did about 5.6M jabs... Made up a bit for the bad Wednesday. We are at 18.5M doses for the week in 5 days. Hopefully we will do 5M each for the next 2 days and finish at around 28M for the week.

-------------
ICMR Update: 450,911,712 total tests... Thursday tests: 1,718,439... Lab count: 2778
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by depleter »

jayakris wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:01 am So we had +34.9K today, from about 1938K tests @ 1.80% ... Pretty good drop of 601 in the 7-day average, after 5 flat days, to 37621... Some 4000 less than expected. About 2500 is due to fewer tests in Kerala and Maharashtra, but there was also an actual 1700 drop in the Northeast states and ODI/AP without much drop in testing... The deaths were 481
Isn't it due to Eid holiday?
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by jayakris »

depleter wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:02 amIsn't it due to Eid holiday?
Ah I see. Quite possibly so. That would explain the poor vaccination numbers on Wednesday too!
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by suresh »

Optimizing testing for COVID-19 in India
by Philip Cherian, Sandeep Krishna, Gautam I. Menon

Abstract

COVID-19 testing across India uses a mix of two types of tests. Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) are relatively inexpensive point-of-care lateral-flow-assay tests, but they are also less sensitive. The reverse-transcriptase polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) test has close to 100% sensitivity and specificity in a laboratory setting, but delays in returning results, as well as increased costs relative to RATs, may vitiate this advantage. India-wide, about 49% of COVID-19 tests are RATs, but some Indian states, including the large states of Uttar Pradesh (pop. 227.9 million) and Bihar (pop. 121.3 million) use a much higher proportion of such tests. Here we show, using simulations based on epidemiological network models, that the judicious use of RATs can yield epidemiological outcomes comparable to those obtained through RT-PCR-based testing and isolation of positives, provided a few conditions are met. These are (a) that RAT test sensitivity is not too low, (b) that a reasonably large fraction of the population, of order 0.5% per day, can be tested, (c) that those testing positive are isolated for a sufficient duration, and that (d) testing is accompanied by other non-pharmaceutical interventions for increased effectiveness. We assess optimal testing regimes, taking into account test sensitivity and specificity, background seroprevalence and current test pricing. We find, surprisingly, that even 100% RAT test regimes should be acceptable, from both an epidemiological as well as a economic standpoint, provided the conditions outlined above are met.
Emphasis is mine. I wish to know how many tests per million of population are needed to get away with 100% RAT regimes. Is anyone close to that. This is a paper from January 2021 that just appeared in print.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by suresh »

Big States 23/7/2021 Friday

KL - 17518 (from 128K tests and TPR of 13.6%) TIL that what is happening in Kerala is called slow burn due to low seropositivity.
MH - 6753 (from 183K tests and TPR of 3.7%)
OR - 1917
TN - 1830
AP - 1747
KL - 1705
AS - 1621
MN - 1284

Total - 34375 (OR to come)

We will have 38-39K cases today.
Last edited by suresh on Fri Jul 23, 2021 2:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

Post by jayakris »

Terrible numbers today from Kerala. it is +17518 from 128,489 tests (86798 AG + 41691 good) for a TPR of 13.63%... My adjusted TPR was 20.67%... For comparison, last Friday had 400 more AG tests and 2300 more good tests (so testing worsened in every way today), but had only 13,750 cases (3768 fewer).

There is almost no doubt that Kerala has got a horrible third wave that is accelerating. Holy crap. I wonder what mutant is doing this.
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