 You're watching News Made Easy, I'm Anandesh Chakravarty and today I'm going to take about Kerala's runaway COVID infections. It's of great glee to right-wingers because they can use it to attack the left-front government in Kerala and say that, look, this is your Kerala model, you completely messed it up, India was on its way to do well and look what you've done. There's a kind of communal angle as well but I'm not going to give it respectability by taking it up at all but it is true, the official data shows that Kerala is doing badly at this moment because yesterday there were about 40,000 odd cases, new COVID cases in India and more than 50% came from Kerala alone but as we know coronavirus is a thing in which when you get COVID you can be asymptomatic you might not even know you've got it and you develop antibodies, you'll never know that you were once a COVID patient so initial estimates said that about 80% of people who get COVID are asymptomatic and have no symptoms but later that number was changed and it was said that a large number who appear to be asymptomatic then develop some symptoms one way to find out what is the total number of infections in a community not just the officially tested cases because that's always going to be lower is to do what is called a sero survey, is to randomly treat test people and find out whether they've developed antibodies and they might have got COVID, they might not have got it, they might not know that they got it but if they have antibodies that means two things, one they either got the infection or two they got vaccinated and developed antibodies, right? I say Amman Indian Council for Medical Research which is the central government's body has done four such sero surveys and the last one, the fourth one took place between 15th of June to 7th of July and for purposes of this show I'm going to take the midpoint 26th June to compare data what is that sero survey show us, that sero survey shows us that the number of cases in people who have antibodies in India is almost two thirds two out of three people in India have antibodies which means they were either infected by the coronavirus they got COVID or they had vaccinations now as I said the 26th June is the relevant date that I'm going to take and I'm going to take the actual official cases on that day for four states including Kerala and I'm going to compare it with three other big states, number one is Maharashtra which has the maximum number of cases Maharashtra on the 26th of June had over 60 lakh COVID official cases Kerala came second with about 29 lakh cases remember Kerala's population is much much smaller than Maharashtra so 29 lakh cases compared to 60 lakh in Maharashtra that's a huge number and I'm going to take two Hindi belt big states Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in Uttar Pradesh on that date there were just 17 lakh cases huge population but just 17 lakh cases and in Madhya Pradesh it was not even 8 lakhs just 7.9 odd lakh cases that's on the 26th of June so by 26th of June 5% of Maharashtra's population had officially through confirmed tests been infected with COVID they got the COVID infection in Kerala that number was 8% huge in Uttar Pradesh it was just 0.7% just 0.7% of people had officially confirmed got COVID infections and in Madhya Pradesh a close number as well about 1% 0.9% less than 1% in fact but what is ICMR's data tell us and now I'm going to take ICMR's data and I'm going to tell you about Kerala last right because on the face of it officially it looks like Kerala was the worst it was the worst when it came to trying to stop COVID because 8% of its population had already by 26th of June got the virus ICMR's sero survey data tells us that around that time in Maharashtra 58% of people had developed COVID antibodies remember I'm reminding you again and again this means that either got vaccinated and developed COVID antibodies which takes about 2 to 3 weeks after your vaccination and or they had been infected 58% in Uttar Pradesh which only had 0.7% official infections compared to its population the sero survey found that 71% of its population had antibodies to the coronavirus antibodies to COVID right so either they were infected or they had developed antibodies because they were vaccinated in Madhya Pradesh where less than 1% officially had got COVID 79% had antibodies which is the highest number for all the big states and now finally I come to Kerala it had the lowest sero prevalence of big states just 44% of people of the population estimated to have either got antibodies because of vaccinations or because they were infected now how do we find out how many people got antibodies developed antibodies because they were vaccinated impossible to tell because you know even after vaccination it takes time and it varies from people people so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do what I'll call a guesstimate I'm going to say that okay 26th of June was not that far back it was just a little over a month ago so I'm going to take yesterday's cumulative vaccination figures for each state I'm going to say what proportion of the population has at least got at least one dose of the vaccine in each of these four states and I'm going to say that 50% of them were vaccinated and had developed antibodies by the 26th of June right the midpoint that I took so if I take that then I have to say that in Maharashtra approximately 18% of the population had developed antibodies due to vaccinations by 26th of June these are broad figures this is a range and this is a guesstimate so it's not going to be as accurate as ICMR's seroprevalence studies but even that after all is a survey right so out of the 58% with seroprevalence or as in with COVID antibodies I'll say about 18% in Maharashtra got it because of vaccination in UP about 11% got it because of vaccination so out of 71% 11% got it because of vaccination in Madhya Pradesh about 21% got it because of vaccination out of the 79% who had antibodies in Kerala because it has a very high rate of vaccination as of now in Kerala about 29% 29% of those who showed seroprevalence around the time when ICMR survey was taking place would have got it because of vaccination there'll be a bit of double counting these are broad figures but remember that this will be equally true for all the states so I'm adjusting for that now remember that as I said that the only way for us to get a sense of the actual infection is to remove the number of people who might have got it because of vaccination and that's what I'm trying to do so what are we left with in Maharashtra about 40% of people who were caught in ICMR study to have developed antibodies 58% was total number and removing 18% so 40% were infected in UP 60% of the population was infected and didn't develop antibodies because of vaccination 60% were infected in Madhya Pradesh as I said about 58% in Kerala it is just 15% so Kerala's actual exposure the population of Kerala who actually got infected even though only half of them ended up being caught in tests only 15% were actually infected around that time around June 26 which explains why there was such a huge population left for the virus to play with yes many of them had developed antibodies because of the vaccine but the virus still had a large number about 55% of the population to infect which it did not have in UP and Madhya Pradesh and in Maharashtra it had a fewer numbers which is why we again saw a bit of a spike in Maharashtra as well so Maharashtra and Kerala the two big states now let's look at what the ratio is so if we look at it and what do I mean by ratio I'm saying the ratio of official cases versus my adjusted seroprevalence adjusted for those who would have got it for vaccination because that is a point being made against ICMR study in Maharashtra I said 5% official cases 5% of the population officially detected to have got infected 40% is my adjusted number based on ICMR and I'm adjusting for vaccinations which means that about 8 times is the actual infection rate look at UP 0.7% officially infected and 60% is my adjusted number it could be 55 it could be 65 to 60% so the ratio here is a whopping 84 times 84 times the number of people who were infected in UP compared to the official numbers and in Madhya Pradesh it is 63 times it could be I mean I'm just giving you a broad picture but look at the ratio it's massive 84 could be 50 that doesn't matter but 50 times is also a very huge number right it could be 90 that is even worse in Kerala what is the case as I said 15% around that time 15% would have been officially infected would have been infected by the coronavirus that means if I compare it to the official cases it's just 2 times so Kerala successfully identified 1 in every 2 cases make that 3 cases make that 4 cases it is still much much better than any of the states we are looking at much better than any of the states whether it's Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh in being able to capture the actual infections and treat them and deal with them let's look at the death rate you can say ok maybe there were so many cases but who cares people didn't die in other states well they didn't die because they weren't counted right we know the under counting that has taken place which has been repeatedly reported in various places we have a new piece that has come out which shows that in the key hotspots of UP the under counting is massive excess deaths were massive what does excess death mean? excess death means that let's say that this is the death rate trend that every year we expect so many people to die given the trend over the past few years how many additional people died in a covid year in a pandemic year we have the Hindu did a study and they came up with several big states the excess deaths in several big states and compared it to the official covid number this did the study from April 2020 to May 2021 and after that we know a lot of people have died in other states so that number has changed significantly but still we get a sense as to excess deaths which is the number of extra deaths from the trend which has taken place during the covid year compared to the official covid death because remember in a covid year if there have been excess death then most of them would be because of the pandemic yes some people might have died because all medical resources are being pushed towards concentrated on treating covid and dealing with covid so maybe people with chronic diseases, terminal diseases died because of that they would have died in coming years but they died this year because they couldn't get medical attention and some excess deaths took place so in Kerala the number of excess deaths was 4178 in the period studied by Hindu in Madhya Pradesh the excess deaths were 192,000 that's the number of excess deaths now compare that to the official covid death data for that same period the same period that the Hindu has studied Kerala declared that 9,954 people had died of covid in this period which is more than the excess deaths which means that Kerala the number of deaths in Kerala which would have normally taken place actually reduced in the covid year because of lockdown because people were wearing masks and respiratory diseases which would have normally killed them killed fewer people, road accidents didn't take place and maybe there was a slight fall in registration in the beginning and that could lead to the reason why we have fewer excess deaths than the total number of coronavirus cases one would have expected that the excess deaths would be higher than the official coronavirus cases covid death cases right but in this case it is lower what's the case story in Madhya Pradesh in Madhya Pradesh officially only 8,068 people died of covid when its excess death was 192,000 I am leaving it to you to decide whether that 8,000 number seems credible to you 192,000 excess deaths and only 8,000 people died of covid what did the others die of maybe they died of something I don't know loneliness or whatever but the point is that one has to adjust for these data and see and remember Kerala has a very good death registration rate much better than other states India has a good registration date because the ministry's data for 2019 says it's almost gone to 90% but Madhya Pradesh would have lower Uttar Pradesh would have lower and Kerala of course higher so maybe this data would catch up as we move forward but the point remains that essentially Kerala has dealt with not only covid stopping covid from spreading as we can see from the seroprevalence rate as well as reducing the number of deaths so even if Kerala sees more infections in the coming weeks if it manages to control it it is not going to take any serious proportions that we saw in some other states where there was no oxygen where there were no hospital beds people were dying on the streets outside hospitals not being able to get any treatment Kerala hasn't seen that because and that's not surprising because the Niti Ayog's own health index ranking makes Kerala number one Kerala is number one in terms of health in India among states and UP is the worst performing and Madhya Pradesh is also somewhere down there among the worst performing states so that is why Kerala's official numbers are robust they're transparent and Kerala has successfully caught coronavirus cases and stopped it from spreading and now that is also the reason why it's spreading faster because others have reached their herd immunity stage probably where is Kerala hasn't but as long as Kerala's health system continues to be able to deal with it then that problem won't exist that is what we have to watch out for that's the show today keep watching Newsclade and do subscribe to us