 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we're joined by news clicks, Praveer Purkhasta and we're going to talk about the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic globally as well as in India. Praveer, thank you so much for joining us. So the number of cases is soon likely to touch around 3 million and we recently crossed the 200,000 deaths landmark also so to speak. So what exactly is happening with the global spread of the disease? It's been almost three months now. Many of the countries in Europe and to some extent some states in the US are thinking about withdrawing lockdowns. In India we have had some of these discussions. So have we reached a time where we can start looking at a very phased or gradual withdrawal of some of the severe restrictions? Well one thing is of course we know much more about the pandemic today, about COVID-19, its progression that we did earlier. But the figures and this is only about the ones who have found who have been infected that feeds a number of people who have not tested who are asymptomatic and could still have been infected. We don't know those numbers. Rough estimates are probably about, we are catching about maybe anything between 25 to 40 percent of the people and large numbers are still not being detected. Particularly in countries like the United States where one in five cases when you test are found to be infected which would seem to show that there are much larger numbers for asymptomatic and the population. As you said it's 3 million figure roughly that we are already in at and if you take the number of infected cases they're less than 2 million. So a number of these cases have also recovered. The really worrying part and that's always been the COVID-19 issue that we have very different death rates depending on where the hospital system has been able to cope with it and where it has not. Germany the death rates have been relatively much lower. The death rates in Italy, Spain, United States has been relatively much higher. So the issue really is can the health system actually handle the overload that you're going to get and it seems that unless you're prepared unless you're willing to take measures which are what's called mitigation. Quarantine of course is a strict measure but mitigation also means that you look at who are the people infected, separate them and so on and separate the infected, those who are in contact with infected from the general population then you will have a better handle. If we look at for instance infected charts you will see that countries and there are about five of them were pretty high in terms of numbers that's Italy which in this particular case led the pack so to say Spain, France, Germany, United Kingdom have almost all flattered their numbers. United Kingdom not so much. The numbers are still rising in terms of deaths. They seem to have a much higher death rate than all the others even though Germany has been as I said much lower than all the other countries but UK death rate seems to stand out. Then you have Iran which has also flattened its curves. All these countries have flattened curves where large numbers have been affected but they still do not look like they are going to go up much further. We see a doubling rate of maybe something like 15 to 20 days right now and as the time progresses I think this is going to even out that the numbers are going to start coming down. The United States is still rising that means yes there is some flattening of the curve from the initial phase where you can see a much sharper rise but if we look at what's happening now it's not that it is as flat a curve as we will see in the other four or five countries I talked about. Iran is also a country which has done reasonably well. It's been able to control the numbers, the rise of numbers. It started almost at the same time as Italy did and it seems to have almost controlled its epidemic and the numbers are lower than what you were seeing in the Western European countries. So this brings me to the next point that you know if you look at for instance what Forbes chart had said somewhere near in February that the best prepared countries and they have a list of this best prepared countries is US, UK, Netherlands. Now all three have been hit and hit pretty hard and the hospital system in New York particularly has been re-hit really hard as has been United Kingdoms. Also what's interesting in all these Western European countries that there are a lot of deaths in what is called the care homes where the old people are where they are together and if an infection takes place it's an immune compromised set of people because they're simply old they have other diseases as well and it seems to spread very fast there and leads to very high deaths. In fact the figures that we are seeing now seem to indicate that 50% of the figure of people who are dead could be from at least Western Europe and the United States could be from the care homes. Now what is the reason for these kind of figures and there are two explanations both of which you can decide which to take and which not to take. One is of course what is called the climatic issue that means humidity and heat has a strong correlation in the cold dry country infection seems to spread faster what is called the effective reproduction rate of the disease is around 3. If it comes to countries which are relatively more humid and have a higher temperature you will see that the number of countries affected are relatively much less. This is one explanation and that would of course map quite closely with the temperate climates being the one which are more prone to the disease as of now but there is also a separate explanation which comes from looking at how the disease really spreads and not looking at these kind of broad figures but looking at other ones I'm not going to say that the climatic issues are not related that means yes humidity and sunlight do have a role but looking at what's happening in India and we'll come to that just a little later it doesn't seem to indicate that it has such a strong role as it's made out to be. I think what you need to look at when the epidemic spreads is spread to human beings so what is the connectedness of the people in terms of people to people contacts transport air travel bus car train all of this physical connectivity how closely do people live to each other the urban areas how closely packed are they these also would indicate how the epidemic would spread and I think the fact that western Europe went up first as well as the United States would seem to also show how connectedness plays an important role in the epidemic and all the models that we have been talking about most of them don't take this into account and therefore they're not catching the important element which is really people spread it's a disease spreads to people because we are the ones who really reproduce the disease so probably like we saw many of these countries are looking at a phased withdrawal of restrictions and one of the key concerns this is raised is the possibility of another round of infections happening again so what kind of how do we envision a withdrawal of these restrictions especially in western Europe like you mentioned which is so strongly where the countries are so strongly connected there's a lot of internal migration there's a lot of internal traveling so what kind of a phased withdrawal I mean is the best possible option well you know I'm not going to really pronounce as an expert on any of this because I'm not looking at what the issues are we have to move beyond just simple lockdowns because even in Wuhan the lockdowns is not what really brought the disease and the control it was testing identifying people separating them and see that the transmission links of the infections are broken now that is the approach which is far more focused on who are infected where at the hot spot how do you identify them and how do you actually take care of them this is the key so first stage yes a simple lockdown which is just to break the transmission links simply because you don't know what's happening next phase is really extensive testing then focusing on the areas that you think are in the emerging hot spots and now that you have antibody testing the antibody testing should not be used to identify who are sick and who are not they should be just used at the moment for epidemiology epidemiological purposes that means identify areas where you think infections are there so it's a quick check how many people are infected how many people are not and therefore focus on those areas which seem to show a large number of you know antibodies in the people's blood so this is the way I would say that the next phase has to move yes the economy the industry all of this has to come back otherwise it's a poorest who are going to get in the hardest but it doesn't mean that you remove all restrictions as a lot of the what shall we say what I call misnomer in the global terms of the red states in the united states which are the most uh in in that sense the most right wing states as they're already calling for that we want our freedom back this is a state intrusion in our lives we don't want it as we know the american people do believe that at the moment physical distancing is still important I think that's going to be there for next three to six months that there would be much less public events and so on but that is not going to be enough unless you do this so yes I think we are moving into a more flexible regime let's see what the western europeans do what the americans do america it's more state by state it's much more being determined by individual governors over there and of course the trumpian misadventures or the shall we say the misadventures in trump land right but for the rest of it I think it is a graded lockdown physical distancing testing we have to see by all accounts our testing numbers have to really go up very very significantly and finally with regard to india so we've seen that the number of cases as of today monday morning was around close to 28 000 and the number of deaths is around 870 almost close to 900 so like you said the progress of the disease in india has been comparatively much slower when we look at some of the countries in western europe and at the same time yesterday saw around 1300 cases I believe so the states again are talking about the possibility of loosening the lockdown a bit the central government has not given a very clear mandate so far on this so going forward what are the key steps that need to be taken as far as the governments are concerned you see here again if you take the figures the gross figures don't tell the full story because india is 1.3 million people so one size fits all solution just won't work in a country as complex and as populated as we are now if we look at the figures and you look at the chart itself and you will see that for instance if you look at the global infected chart which I was talking about earlier indian figures still show a rise that means a doubling rate is probably about eight days or so maybe eight to ten days at the moment okay now that's not a flattening of the curve in the sense say of milatia which you will see the doubling rate is probably something like 25 to 30 days it's pretty much a flat curve and it also I was at that point of time at one point of time it started actually at a higher level because by the time they reached 100 india was relatively behind meaning that we saw a hundred number which is the beginning of our charts relatively about seven eight days behind milatia but if you now come to india for instance again and look at all the states you will find that flattening of the curve is visible of course in the case of kerala which has almost become flat which means the new cases which are there are very few of course you will have some spikes because even one infected person comes in there will be some infections that you will see if you got right in the beginning so some spikes yes but they seem to be in control you will see that telegana figures are also looking good if you look at the telegana chart if you look at the chart you will see telegana curve is also flattening and also doubling that seems to be also in some control of what is happening but if you look at for instance the figures of uttapradesh you look at madhapradesh you look at even rajasthan and of course maharashtra which is very much you know still rising and gujrat these are rising pardon and gujrat and gujrat that was going to come to gujrat just a little later you will see all of them are rising and there has been no significant control that you can see they have exercised and so that is one issue if you look at gujrat as you are talking you will see its rate of change that means the rate at which the infections are seen to rise has been faster than most of the states but that's not surprising because if you go to what the deaths were and there is a death chart we have you will see deaths in gujrat were much earlier more than most other states in fact they are now number two in infections and number two in deaths but there were also number two in deaths about say eight to ten days back and there were number three in deaths maybe about two weeks back so gujrat deaths have been much larger than the number of infections which seem to indicate the testing figures were low they are not catching the people who really infected maybe they were just going after certain sections and not doing a wide enough testing and normally the deaths takes place the numbers rise two weeks after you see the infection which is what you will see in Maharashtra for instance the numbers lag by about two weeks but in the case of gujrat actually death figures seem to have been a precursor showing that it was probably not being tested enough infections are higher so coming back to India at the moment we are not still in control some states are some states are flattening the curve there are about five six states which include Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan and of course Maharashtra and of course Gujrat so these are the states which are not in control Telangana Tamil Nad relatively better Delhi looking up a bit we have to observe quite closely Maharashtra some flattening but still rising so this is the picture that is there so I would still think that even if lockdowns are partially lifted we'll have to do a state by state approach and the central government's directives and they have issued something like 50 over the last 25 30 days they seem to be again one size fits all approach it's almost saying that we have given you the directives no state can go beyond it because it's done under this disaster management act and we have the past most of the directives have also come from ministry of health sorry ministry of home they have not really seem to be coming from a task force which looks at health because this is a public health emergency seems to be a police approach that we seem to be largely taking and that's going to affect the way we react to this particular pandemic because you know the number of people who are going to die are not that significant given our numbers but the point is they have the possibility of overwhelming the health system and that's what you have to really prepare for that the numbers when they come at the same time doesn't overwhelm the system at the same time you now have to also see that people cannot go under this lockdown particularly in countries like India where there is a huge number of people who are migrants who are without any sustenance who do not have any daily employment so you will have to consider at least getting some of your industries back slowly but at the same time if you want to go that route then what you need to do is test extensively and already reports are there we're running out of what is called the RNA test kits extraction of the RNA that you have to do so the test kits may be there but you're running out of essentially the other reagents tools chemicals that you need to run the tests so just the machines and the kit is not enough you also need other things along with it so we have to see what the supply chain is and finally let's not forget our numbers are still very very low in terms of testing but the good part of it is amongst the people we test about three to four percent now about five percent seem to show infection that's still much lower than the United States for example where one out of five people who are tested show the infection here about out of 25 people we test or 20 people we test we find one in fact so that's a much much better figures in terms of the ratio but in terms of the total number of people tests to the population our figures are one of the lowest in the world thank you so much for being here for talking to us