Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jayakris]

So, we had +39,649 today, from about 1988K tests at 1.99% ... 489 deaths... Then Maharashtra added 2479 old cases and 3509 old deaths on reconciliation. They don't affect the weekly average. The 7-day average for case numbers rose by about 100 to 38,232 today... So we had +97, -200 and +100 in the latest 3 days, showing the average to be just flat. Not rising yet.

See today's daily updates for details. Maharashtra and Kerala both had the positivity go up a bit today, which neutralized the drops everywhere else. We need to wait for some of the Northeast numbers to start falling and hope that MAH and KER don't have trouble already underway, to know if the current wave will drop further. Not getting clear signals one way or the other, for the last few days.

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ICMR Update: 449,193,273 total tests... Tuesday tests: 1,852,140... Lab count: 2764

[jayakris]

The morning PIB release from the Govt says there are 28.9M doses with the states, with 5.3M in the pipeline, for 34.2M total. That is a pretty big number! We should be doing 6M per day for at least 3 or 4 days now with no issues (unless vaccine hesitancy has actually started).

[jayakris]

And it is 17,481 in KER today... From 145,993 tests (93,530 AG + 52463) at 11.97% ... It is 1844 more cases than on last Wednesday when they had 156K tests with 10K more AG tests and about 100 more good tests at 10.00%. Fewer tests and seriously more cases. I think there is almost no doubt that Kerala has a third wave catching fire.

I am sure the Rijo Johns and all other excuse-makers for the state Government will say that it is because they are testing at all the right places and that the increase was to be expected. That it is because of Kerala is "honestly" reporting numbers while the rest of India is filled with idiots who lie, cheat and do not test or treat anybody.

I guess that must be the case for the rest of the world too, where we don't have a single place where the wave has not gone down for one whole damn year. They all must all be cheating on Covid data and not testing carefully like the perfect "model" place called Kerala!

I am just so depressed about Kerala.

[jayakris]

I just found this article. The Times of India did have an article on the Antigen test problem in Kerala, a couple of days ago. 64% antigen tests in Kerala’s 2-day ‘augmented’ testing
The title is misleading but they do quote a couple of experts who are damn right in what they said. The problem is, the Malayalam press will NOT talk about it, and nobody in Kerala really knows.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan had, in January 2021, announced that 70% of the tests in the state would be done on RT-PCR kits. It never happened...

Can you imagine the criticism if it was Yogi or Chauhan who announced that and we saw AG tests increasing from 60% to 70%, seven months later? But Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan is like Trump who said "“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”. That is the case with Pinarayi. He can get away with anything.

Frankly, if Suresh hadn't asked me about this 6 weeks ago, even I wouldn't have known. I was assuming for months that It was not worse than 50% or so, till I checked and was shocked to see nearly 70% AG tests. I didn't expect Pinarayi to come through on his announcement, but even I did not expect it to have gone the other way and worsened.

"..We don't have the capacity to increase RTPCR tests, as in the last one and half years, efforts made to strengthen these facilities in the Government sector are inadequate. Also many private labs in the states reduced RTPCR tests as the Government slashed the prices," said Dr. Arun N M

There are 149 labs in the state — 44 Government and 105 private labs — equipped to conduct RTPCR tests. However, many private labs and hospitals have stopped doing RTPCR tests as the Givernment slashed prices.... "it is not feasible at Rs.500/tests. Also, most collection points have stopped collecting samples for these tests," said Dr. Ramesh Kumar

There you can see precisely what the problem is. Kerala's healthcare system and whatever success Kerala has, is all in the private sector. Unlike in the rest of India where the Government healthcare people run around like chickens with their heads cut off, the Kerala Givernment has had to do NOTHING in Covid management. They just take credit by creating smoke and mirror stories. And then they take policy decisions that stop the educated people from doing the right thing. If the hospital nearby does not give you an RTPCR test, what can you do?

Is there a bigger lie in the world than the so-called Kerala "model"? Are there any people outside of N.Korea who are as misled about the world they live in, as Malayalees?

[suresh]

Big States 21/7/2021 Wednesday

KL - 17481
MH - 8159
AP - 2527
OR - 1927
TN - 1891
KA - 1639
MN - 1327

Total - 34391 (AS to come)

I predict around 41-42K cases today.

[Kumar]

It is really a perplexing case with Kerala! They have higher vaccination rates compared to most of the ndia! The analogy that Kerala people are less exposed is just becoming stale!

https://www.icmr.gov.in/pdf/covid/strat ... 052021.pdf

Rapid antigen tests (RATs) were recommended in India for COVID-19 testing in June 2020. However, the use of these tests is currently limited to containment zones and health care settings. RAT has a short turn- around time of 15-30 minutes and thus offers a huge advantage of quick detection of cases and opportunity to isolate and treat them early for curbing transmission. So far, ICMR has approved 36 RATs of which 10 are on GeM portal. To meet the overwhelming testing demand, it will be prudent to upscale testing using RATs.

As per ICMR , they recommend RAT as first step in containment zones! May be all of Kerala is in containment zone

[jayakris]

And what the hell happened in vaccinations today??? Just 2.2M shots as per Cowin, when the states have some 35M doses sitting with them! This week has so far seen just about 13M jabs in 4 days, and we have 3 days left to see if it can get close to even 25M shots. I was hoping for over 35M. Are some states stockpiling now to do some big hooplah "we did 2 million today" crap? Why can't we get past all this bullcrap talk and just do our job?

[suresh]

The seven day average fell by 11 yesterday. It is totally flat.

@jay Chennai Corporation had no vaccination camps for at least two days last week. It looks like stocks were low or none. Private hospitals continued to vaccinate people.

[Kumar]

And what the hell happened in vaccinations today??? Just 2.2M shots as per Cowin, when the states have some 35M doses sitting with them! This week has so far seen just about 13M jabs in 4 days, and we have 3 days left to see if it can get close to even 25M shots. I was hoping for over 35M. Are some states stockpiling now to do some big hooplah "we did 2 million today" crap? Why can't we get past all this bullcrap talk and just do our job?

Is this with state government and private hospitals or just state govt?

[jayakris]

We had +41,687 from about 2002K tests at 2.08%... The 7-day average is 38,222... That is -11... So we have had -30, +97, -200, +100, -11 for changes in the daily average. Yeah, absolutely flat!!...

I was hoping for MAH at around 5000 and Kerala at around 7500 by now, as of a month ago. They ain't dropping MAH also has shown a slight rising tendency on TPR this week. Getting more and more sure that these two states (at least Kerala) has initiated the next wave. Bloody hell.

The Kerala death numbers are actually showing the vaccine effect though! The case numbers have gone up from 11.5K average to 15.6K in the last 31 days, but the death average peaked at around 127 and actually dropped to 100 in the last two weeks. The only explanation is that a lot of people are getting helped by the vaccine.

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ICMR Update: 450,911,712 total tests... Wednesday tests: 1,718,439... Lab count: 2771

[jayakris]

@jay Chennai Corporation had no vaccination camps for at least two days last week. It looks like stocks were low or none. Private hospitals continued to vaccinate people.

There is no reason to have a vaccine shortage in any state at this point, with 35M doses out there. All I can think of, is that some states are hoarding it, or there are some very serious errors in calculating the states' demand and in the logistics (most probably the former, as the latter should be running okay after this many months). Anyway, things just don't add up! Not yet time for vaccine hesitancy to have an effect. In fact, ever since it was expanded to 18+ age, there have not been reports of hesitancy anywhere. Only reports are that people are not showing any hesitance in places like TN now.

Is this with state government and private hospitals or just state govt?

The ministry release has never said anything clearly about how much is going to the states and what is with the private hospitals. My understanding is that the private hospitals are procuring only some 10% of the vaccines and that the Government is taking more than 75% production now. The 35M that I see in Wednesday's morning report seems to be what is with the state government (or in the 3-day pipeline). I guess it could be 32M with the Government 3 or 4M in private hospitals too.

[suresh]

^^ I don't think it was a state wise issue. Probably Chennai ran out of stocks. Last couple of days look decent though.

[jayakris]

Maharashtra has been doing a good job in improving the RT-PCR ratio lately. 50% of Covid tests now RT-PCR across Maharashtra

It was always difficult to find data on how bad the AG testing issue was in Maharashtra. Now we know. They were as bad as Kerala till recently. But they have improved a bit.

People can keep talking about how these two "honest states" are doing their job, and that the rest of India is all incompetent, lying, data-fudging, clueless people who don't care. Sorry, I never bought it. I have more respect for Indians than that. These two states have screwed up in testing and have done that ALL along. When they were both testing at very low rates last year, that was the problem. Then they both increased testing, but it was all AG tests, and then THAT was the problem. The case numbers really showed it. Finally, at least Maharashtra seems to be doing something. The Kerala "experts" and apologists will now start saying that Maharashtra is lying too, and that the perfect "model" God's own country is the only one handling Covid right in the whole world. That the whole world must have had never-ending waves for 12 months that they all covered up while Kerala did God's own work honestly. What a scam!

[jayakris]

It is +12,818 from just 103,543 tests, at 12.38% today in KER. 62,616 AG tests and 40,927 good tests. It is 22K fewer tests than reported on the last Thursday, when it was 13.7K at 10.98% TPR... Slight improvement in the RT-PCR ratio, I guess. Still my adjusted-TPR was 16.68% compared to 15.54% a week ago.

[suresh]

Big States 22/7/2021 Thursday

KL - 12818 (from 104K tests and TPR = 12.4%) Again number of tests have gone down.
MH - 7302 (from 196K tests, 25K fewer tests today, TPR =3.7%)
OR - 1948
TN - 1872
AP - 1843
AS - 1796
KA - 1653
MN - 928

Total - 30160

We will have around 35K new cases added today. The seven day average is going to go down but I suspect that is largely due to a reduction in the number of tests.