 Hello and welcome to NewsClick for our discussions on what is happening in the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in India. We'll start with simply looking at the broad figures and then we will drill down a little into how these figures are coming about in India with the trajectory of COVID-19 and where we are. Unfortunately, the figures don't look good at all. In the global figures, which are bad enough, we have more than 18 million people affected today, roughly 5 million from the US alone, 4.8 million. But Brazil and India are doing pretty badly and India particularly is unfortunately showing signs of being the fastest increase in the world today in COVID-19 cases. So that is something very, very important that if we look at not just the broad figures, the base figures, which we can feel okay, we are still behind considerably behind the United States, which is 4.8 million, we are only 1.8 million. Brazil is 2.7 million, so we're not that bad, we're only third highest in the world, but in terms of new infections, today we have overtaken the United States, which is consistently above us for quite a long while and we are running well above Brazil. So in terms of new infections, India today is appearing as the epicenter of the global pandemic. Make no mistake about that. We are becoming the global pandemic epicenter. Something which the government doesn't seem to talk about is not addressing, is not taking any measures and we are talking about lockdown, one, two, three various unlockdown phases. So all of that now is this whole issue of how to increase the pandemic has been given up now by the central government. I'll come back to that in a minute, but I also want you to look at what are the figures of deaths. And if you take new deaths, and we're looking at the Worldometer site, which gives you the global picture based of course on Johns Hopkins website and its retains, Indian deaths today are the second highest in the world in terms of daily deaths, what are called the new deaths. This last 24 hours, how many people died? And Mexico is number one, but Mexico's total number of infected or new cases are relatively much lower. So in that sense, if you take new cases and new deaths into account, India is really the epicenter of the pandemic. And all these claims that our deaths are not that bad and so on, really don't hold good, because you have to look at the number of people daily being infected, and the number of people who recovered, yes, and our recoveries are relatively slower than the total number of people who are actually getting infected per day. We have to look at daily figures. It's no point in looking at total figures. So if you're looking at the figures, we shouldn't look at what are the total figures of recovered or the total figures who have been infected. Those figures are good for historical data, but the current pandemics, tragically can be seen by the new deaths, the new infected and the new recovered. And if you take these figures into account, India's figures show that our pandemic is actually increasing, and this is what really should worry us. Let's look at also the other issues that we had. Yes, when you come to urban areas, there is always this issue. If we take, for instance, Delhi, which has been showing 23,000 per week somewhere at the end of June, now it's come down. But at the same time, if we look at other cities, you will see that other cities, Delhi, Mumbai, the various other cities that you can look at. Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai are three cities which had picked up the first. They seem to have now flattened the bench, not too much, but they've flattened the bench. Certainly the slope of these curves, as you can see, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, all of them seem to be following a certain rate of growth, which is not as high as the work, say about 30 days back. So some cheer on that score, and definitely you can see improvements, but you also have new areas come up, Hyderabad, Abhidabad, because they're all white, Kolkata. But I think that's not the new issue. The new issue is that it's no longer these cities which dominate the numbers, though there is a feeling that these cities still provide 30-35% of the numbers of total infected in India, or the new cases in India. The reality is, if you take new infected cases, this has spread far beyond the cities into smaller cities, not just the metropolitan cities, the smaller cities, areas close to the metropolitan centers, and what would become the periphery of the metropolitan, like Bombay or Delhi or Kolkata or Chennai. So those areas are now becoming slowly the new centers of epidemic. We have seen this in Maharashtra, where it has spread to the Bombay-Pune bed, and then you can see also its extension towards, for instance, Karnataka or down the coast. So what you are seeing is widespread infections taking place all across the country, and while it might have started, say four weeks back or five weeks back from the cities, it has now spread all over the country. So this is going to only increase, it's not going to go down. Now there are various claims regarding deaths, I have to say this, that you know, when we look at infections going up like this, we have to see what happens to the health system, are they able to take care of the number of patients they are getting, and therefore the death rate compared to the number of infections become important. And though Kerala's numbers, which initially were very low in terms of infections, have gone up because people have come from different parts of the country, from outside into Kerala, so it's very difficult to keep the infections outside the state. But it is important to register that Kerala's death rates are still very, very low, when you look at the total deaths in Kerala, and you can see from our chart here, what you will see is total deaths in Kerala are still only about 81. Compare that to, for instance, Maharashtra, which is 15,500, compare that to Gujarat, which is 2,500, where about 26,000 people are infected. We just checked the Gujarat total number of infected today. Gujarat, 66,000 people have been infected. Out of that, the number of deaths is about 2,500, which means we have about roughly 6 to 7% infection to patronage rate, compared to Kerala, where 25,000 people have been infected, but we have a death rate, total death rate of only 82, which is really very, very small compared to any criteria that we can think of. So the issue is that it is doable. It is doable in India. It is doable. If it's possible to do it in Kerala, it's possible to do it in other states also. So if you cannot stop the infection, can we stop the deaths? That's the challenge the government has to address. And unfortunately, we don't seem to have any indication it is addressing. Now, I'm not going to go down into details of numbers today. I really want to address more important issue, which is what are we going to do about the pandemic? And here there are two sets of issues. One is how do we treat it as a public health issue? And this is where the government, the ICLM, all the agencies that we have talked about, they should be forthcoming. Do they have any idea? Do they have any plan? What is it they're telling the states? How are they going to address the fact that India has become the new representative of the world's pandemic? And we do not see the growth rate of this pandemic slowing down in India. We don't see it in the states. We don't see it overall in terms of Indian figures. So what is it that we are going to do? Is the question that the government needs to answer? And the first answer it should at least accept. Now that multiple state chief ministers have said, we have community spread in Kerala, then I think it's time for the government to say, yes, we have community spread and accept that reality. After all, you cannot be epidemic of the world, you know, the pandemic's epicenter, and yet we're not that you have community spread. So ICLM has to be forthcoming. But what we have missing at the moment is all the government people who are supposed to be centrally responsible for this pandemic control, epidemic control. You don't have the minister of health coming to television talking to us. They don't seem to be, we don't see the ICMR chief coming to television and talking to us. We don't see the health secretary. So there seems to be a vacuum about what they are thinking and how they communicate to the people. There is in some sense giving up and let's say, now let's blame the states. So at the end of it, are we just playing games through the pandemic and focus seems to have shifted to talking to governments, doing other things, blaming the opposition, finding how to get certain communities and certain sections over the daily rights, for example. So we seem to see the government's focus seems to have shifted completely from the pandemic. Now this has serious consequences because the government has also allocated to itself powers under the Disaster Management Act. And if those powers are going to be exercised only to find suppliers and reporters, some reporters for instance in the Marshall have been charged under the Disaster Management Act. We have seen other examples also. I think one of the fairly well-known television figures has been charged and one of the charges in Marshall was under the Disaster Management Act again. So this is not the use of the Disaster Management Act. It should be used to actually control the pandemic if you want those powers. It's not required to exercise emergency powers to control the epidemic. There is enough powers already in the government. The question is, what are we going to do? I'm not going to go into the details of that today. We have discussed it enough a number of times. How do you track and treat are the key elements today in how to control the pandemic. And obviously widespread testing is how then it has dropped its figures down. And if that can be done in other parts of the country, we'll see the numbers coming down instead of continuously growing. We are the only country in the world which has a draconian lockdown. But any standards for the most draconian lockdowns didn't fail because people have to go back with lots of jobs and not having income. So if we take that into account, the results we have got are the worst in the world. There is no other country which is doing both this draconian lockdown so early in the pandemic and yet has nothing to show for it. So I think that's an answer which we will seek not today, but we'll seek at some other time when we get to historical analysis. The last point I would like to make is well, the other issue would be what are we going to do in terms of medicines, providing hospitals and providing vaccines even when it becomes available. As far as medicines are concerned, we know that medicine works well, not well, it works modestly in the initial phases. But if it is available cheaply, large number of people use it. Even if it has a 15-20% effect, that means to get 15-20% people recovering much faster, therefore controlling the transmission of the disease as well. This shouldn't cost us more than 200 rupees to have six tablets to find a course of 100% yet the government doesn't seem to have taken any steps to move, break the patient if required and make it available at a mass scale because this is something we can produce very quickly and at scale. We don't seem to have anything that remotely resembles taking steps on discount. The government is content to leave it to the SIPLAS, to heteros and other people who are charging something like 32,000 for a six day, six capsules, six files and when that cost should not be more than maybe 200, 300 rupees. So that is one part of it. The second part of it is of course that as we know already, we have to control the reaction of the body. The immune system is attacking the lung and dexamethasone has been known to be effective. It has significant reduction in number of deaths on those who are in ventilators or those who are on oxygen support. What are the steps the government is taking? Has it popularized this? Has it been dexamethasone available widely? Those things we have yet to hear. So what we have is a silence on that count and we really don't know how the public health system which is the first line of defense who should make available testing should make individuals responsible in it. Widespread testing cheaply available so that people can check themselves. It's community transmission. It's already there. So those steps are not being taken. I think this is something which is very significant and the last part, vaccine. If we do not raise the issue now, when the vaccine will become available, I'm optimistic it will become available because there are a number of vaccines now going under field trials, what is called the phase three trials. We will have a vaccine by the end of the year. It will be available to the Indian people. We have absolutely nothing on that count. No one is telling us anything about it. We have certain things, private sector companies like Serum Institute has talked about. But let's face it, they are private companies. They will get from Austro-Zeneca the ability to make the vaccine and transfer it to others. But they are under first choice that who pays first will not be India. Who will get the vaccine when they're not be India? It's going to be UK which is already reserved for its 60 billion files in vaccines. It will be second with the United States who have given a lot of money. I think it's about 1.2 or 1.4 billion dollars they have given to Austro-Zeneca and Oxford for the trials of the vaccine. So those vaccines, we are not going to be the first one to get it when we get it. Even when we get it, we will get it in reasonable process. There are another four vaccines which are already in phase three trials. Two of them are Chinese. There are also two Russian vaccines going into trials. The Indian vaccine which has been talked about earlier. That is going to take time. That's the phase three trials will take at least in March end to complete. So we are not in a position to talk about that vaccine being the first vaccine that will be available in the world. So the question is, yes, we start getting vaccine in the world. When will the Indian people get it? We have yet to hear from the government. Any plans, how they wanted to see, it seems they are again dependent completely on the mercy or on the kindness of big pharma. Who has not been known to be kind in the past or even currently to be vaccines available to the world at large and to the Indian population. This is doubly sad because we have both the ability in the country in terms of science institutions to duplicate any vaccine made anywhere very quickly. We have the laws which are there. Article 92 of the patent act which allows for breaking of any patents under conditions of health emergency as well as conditions of an epidemic, both of which are currently true. And we don't seem to see anything happening on that count as well. So I think this is the key issue that we have to think about today. How do we handle the public health crisis which is here already? How does a public health system become the first line of defense of the private health system which is not the one which can work during epidemics efficiently? And second is, how do you make medicines and vaccines available to the people? Because that's clearly the only way we'll be able to control the pandemic. And if we don't control the pandemic, it's very clear from what the United States is seeing that the economy does not have enough money. In the United States in the year on year loss in the quarter two of roughly 33% of the GDP, which means that whatever you may talk about re-opening the economy. The economy does not reopen because people will not spend unless the epidemic has gone. And this is the brutal reality that you have to face. But the pandemic versus economy is not an issue. It is really defeating the pandemic, defeating the epidemic locally and nationally in every country as well as globally that will be able to reopen the economy. That is something at least the political leadership in India does not seem to be addressing or thinking about it. This is all we have in NewsClip today. Do keep watching NewsClip. Do visit our website and look at our YouTube channel.