 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we're going to do another round of updating our audience, our viewers, about the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for India, because obviously, that's of greater interest to most of our viewers. If we look at the number of cases, total confirmed cases, it's about 82,000. And we have had about 4,000 in the last 24 hours as new cases. That's a worrying sign, because numbers had gone down per day. It's come up again a little. But we have to accept that these figures will wax and wane, because it is really not something which will be smooth and gradual that we seem to think in epidemics. Some cities suddenly go up, some clusters suddenly show a lot of new cases, and you are going to see this uneven rise and fall. Harshvardhan, our Minister for Health, has claimed that a doubly great has gone down. We'll see the charts to see whether that's really true, or is it probably an extrapolation made with just two few samples. Our testing rates are not bad, because if we look at our total number of tests, then we have done 2 million tests in this period last couple of months. And that's not a bad figure if we look at what different countries have done. But if we look at our population, which is 1.3 billion, that means our testing numbers compared to our population are still low. And though we have tested about 93,000 people in the last 24 hours, compared to the number of people we need to test, and compared to the number of people already infected, this is still low. We'll come back to this a little later. If we look at the total picture of India in terms of which are the states affected, they don't seem to show too much of a change. In the sense, we have Maharashtra, Gujarat, which are still showing a high rate of infection, also registering a fairly large number of deaths in terms of the total numbers. You also see Chennai has suddenly gone up. And that's affected, of course, the Tamil Nadu figures. We'll come back to this again. So yes, issues that we have been talking about in terms of both confirmed cases and deaths are there. And the numbers of people dead, it's about 2,700 or so, in 82,000 odd people who have been infected, this is a fairly high death rate figure. So we have to still keep watching how many deaths occur, where they occur, because sometimes a large number of deaths are an indication that maybe the infected people are not being tested and not being captured. And that's why they're showing up as COVID-19 deaths. Out of proportion to the number of people infected. When you look at the world, of course, we have a picture which is not pretty at all at the moment. We are not in control of the pandemic. And particularly, in countries like the United States, things are still rising. We have about four, approaching towards 4.5 million worldwide figures, and we have number of deaths which are, again, pretty large, more than 300,000 people have died. So if you take, for instance, what would be called the worst flu epidemics that have taken place, and that was really the swine flu epidemic, it's a combination of swine and bird flu epidemic that came out of North America, that had probably a death figure of something like 284,000. This is the CDC estimate. This is not the figures that were counted at that point of time. But CDC, the United States Agency, which looks at infectious diseases, had calculated that this is roughly 284,000 people and died worldwide. So compared to that, in the last two to three months, we have had more than 300,000 deaths. That's a big figure. And our new cases are still rising at a rate which makes us feel that at the moment, globally, we are still not in control of the pandemic. Of course, the figures are highest in the United States, which everybody knows, it's about 1.3 million, followed by the European Union. But what is, again, worrying is new countries are joining the number of cases. And in this, Brazil, with under Bolsonaro, who has refused to recognize that this is something which is to worry about and there should be lockdown, strong measures, he's been really doing what will be called pandemic denial. Brazil has taken over really the second spot and Russia has risen quite a bit. But if you look at these figures, what is worrying is the US figures are not dropping. They still continue to rise, though it's a slower rise, and we'll come back to that. Brazil is rising fast, but almost all other countries, the new infections are sort of holding steady. They're not continuing to rise as they are in Brazil, and as they're not in the United States. United States also, we see a leveling off the number of infections, but because they have such a high figure already, these figures are still adding up. We do not see a drop that we saw in Italy, in France, in Spain, and Germany, compared to what the US is showing, because the US started showing new infections almost at the same time as Italy did. So Italy figures have started to come down, but the US figures are still not coming down. Now, if we take the deaths, we have a very similar figure. Number of deaths are highest in the United States, followed by Brazil and Western European Union states. Here the death figures in UK are worrying because they seem to have the highest number of deaths in European Union. Of course, with Brexit, they're out of the European Union, but in Western Europe, the highest figures of death are from UK. Again, a higher number of deaths than what you would expect in the population of people infected. So these are causes of worry, why it is higher, and we'll have to look at those figures again. I'd like to take you to our, basically, our website, the Newsclick website, and if we go there, let's look at, for instance, the infected countries. Now, of course, these are no longer the highly infected countries. Brazil and Russia has taken over, and we will see in the later charts, which is not today, we'll see also how they shape up compared to others. But let's look at, for instance, what is happening to the United States? And if you see that, you will see the United States figures are continuing to rise, and they're not flattening. The way, for instance, Italy figures are flattening. You can see Italy, Iran, you can see France, you can see Spain. All of these are flattening in terms of the new infections that we see, that they are not that many. But the US, which is already around 1.3 million and 1.4 million at this point, we'll see every day still about 25,000, 30,000 cases. Now, that is something to worry about because flattening of the curve would mean that these numbers would slowly decline. They are still tending to hold steady. That means the US is still, I will say, teaching at the brink of either taking off again or going down. We have to say which way it goes, partly because there are a number of states, each state behaves differently. The lockdowns in each of the states are different. So what it tends to do is therefore to give an overall picture in a graph which combines all the figures of the country is not a very, shall we say, a very good way of looking at the picture because each of the states could have different ways or that they are taking off or not taking off. And therefore an average figure for the country as a whole does not give us a true picture. Now, let's look at India again. And I would like to show you that for instance, what we have always compared India to is Malaysia. Why are we taking Malaysia? Because Malaysia seems to show good control. And though they started with a higher rate that India, in fact, initially Malaysia was showing rates which are almost twice that of India at this point of time. And you can see suddenly India takes off around this time after about 18 days of the zero date. We have taken the zero date as you know as 100 infected. The day each country hits 100 infected, that's where we bring every country to a common base so we can compare what they're doing. So this does not go according to the calendar but the hundred victim infected cases when we have, we put everybody at that point and we just show the days from that and each of the days obviously depend on the calendar is a different one from the one that we are showing. But this allows us to compare the responses of different countries at the same point of time in the infection, not in terms of the calendar. Now, we can see that India was lower than Malaysia for the first 18 days or so. It starts overtaking Malaysia after that point and you will see after that the distance between Malaysia and India, Malaysia at the moment is about 6,800 or so and India is at the moment 81,000, it's more than even 10 times the number, somewhere near 12 to 13 times the number. This shows that while they have flattened the curve, India has no and if you see the slope, you will see India curve is steadily rising and it is certainly rising beyond what countries like Iran, countries like Italy, countries like Spain have done. Of course, India started a little later than them, that means it hit the hundred number figure later than these countries did. We were sort of about roughly 18 days behind Italy. Yeah, let's look at it. You will see India is roughly about 18 days behind Italy. But if you see the figures that you will see that there is a steady rise for the last 10 to 12 days, the slope does not show any flattening as what the health minister talked about. And if you take our doubling rate, which should really be seen not in terms of something we compute today and based on last two days or three days, we should see the doubling rate of India when it was a half of the 82,000 figure that we could see. And we'll see that's roughly about 11 days, roughly 10 to 11 days back. So if it is 10 to 11 days back that we had half our current figures, our doubling rate is really at the moment 11 days and not based on the last three days figures. Why don't we take the last three days figures as Hanba Harshavan seems to have taken? Simply because we have to see a slightly longer time frame before we can make a judgment whether there is a really a long-term flattening of the curve or is it something that we are saying which is a temporary one and suddenly if it's a knife for instance takes off as it just did, then this whole curve would again start going up. So this is really the problem with using statistics that you can make it mean anything you want and that's why there is a famous statement which is what is it lies, damn lies and statistics. So I'm not going to say that the health minister is lying but certainly he's shading the statistics in his favor and at the moment we'll still keep our fingers crossed but that this really does behave the way he thinks it will. When you come to Indian states and this is the really the big issue that we should check out. If we come to Indian states, now in Indian states we seem to see a very similar phenomena. You have flattening of certain states that I will point out telling Manna and of course Kerala in that. Kerala has been by far the best performer in terms of meeting the COVID-19 challenge. It was the first to see the 100 cases. In fact, every state followed Kerala in that sense. Maharashtra and Kerala were the ones who show 100 cases virtually on the same day. Now we can see that Maharashtra has gone up continuously while Kerala has flattened the curve after the first 10 days you can see it slowly flattening and after the 35th day it reached 100 figure and you can see that Kerala's curve is almost parallel. Yes, there will be certain lips, small numbers which will go up and it goes up primarily because of migrants coming from outside and they will certainly carry infections into Kerala but looking at what Kerala has done and how the health system there has behaved it looks like Kerala is very much in control of the epidemic over there. If we come to Telangana which is another state which has done reasonably well it was flat for quite some time but it has started to show some rise. We'll have to see whether this rise which probably is more in Hyderabad than any other places and the urban centers tend to go up a little more than other centers and we'll come back to this later but this is probably also relatively under control. If we look at Maharashtra it's a very trend steady rise and the large part of this really comes from Bombay and it suburbs the Spune and this of course comes from the fact that Bombay is a very densely populated city. The huge number of clusters where the density of the population is one of the highest in the world therefore something is surprising. Control of the COVID-19 epidemic is going to be relatively more hard over there. If we come to Gujarat Gujarat there is a little bit of flattening of the curve and it seems that Anathabad which is the city which is really going up in large numbers that they have seen there is seems to be some control over it at the moment. Yes, from the way Gujarat was suddenly took off I think Gujarat at the moment seems a little better but we have suddenly a takeoff in Tamil Nadu and as I was talking about this seems to be largely Chennai related because Chennai suddenly has a market which has been infected, found to be infected and from that they have been able to trace something like two and a half thousand cases. So a huge number of the increase that we see in Chennai that is reflected in the uptick we see in Tamil Nadu's numbers otherwise it was also relatively holding better earlier. Delhi is still rising not as fast as for instance right now Chennai is or as fast as Maharashtra is but I will say that the rate of growth still is not very comfortable. Now when we talk about 11 days doubling rate or Harshabandhan's 40 to 14 days doubling rate these are a little misleading for a simple reason that we have to look at what each state is doing and even within that what each city is doing because the infection clusters are really in certain cities. Now there are probably about eight to 10 cities which show more than 60% of the infections in India right now. The cities that we are talking about is of course Mumbai and Delhi which are the two cities which show the largest number. They're also very big cities. So it is not surprising they have large numbers but they also have clusters very densely populated clusters where the disease seems to be relatively more difficult to control in spite of all the containment measures being taken and therefore we have large numbers taking off from in these places and that creates the big numbers that we see in Maharashtra. So lot of the Maharashtra's numbers come from Bombay and its suburbs more than 60% is really Bombay and its suburbs and then of course we have residual five to six percent from Pune. If we come to Madhya Pradesh there we see almost 50% in fact little more than 50% coming from Indore alone. But Indore is not really one of the largest towns in Madhya Pradesh that would really be Bhopal. So this figure would show there was an undetected cluster which it took off and it has taken some time before the Indore authorities have been able to control at least the numbers that we see and Ujjain which is nearby had also taken off. So these two put together probably around 60% of Madhya Pradesh total numbers. If we come to Delhi of course Delhi is a city so there is no question of differentiating between Delhi and others. But if we come to for instance Chennai again 60% of the Tamil Nadu figures or probably 55% of Tamil Nadu figures are from Chennai alone. Now if you put Chennai in its suburbs probably it will go over 60%. So you are really looking at about eight to 10 cities in which the COVID spread has been significant and these are the ones which need to be controlled and even within the cities you have what I call hotspots or clusters that have to be really controlled. So this is where the real issue lies. How do you control such clusters? Of course if you take the death rates they very much follow what we are seeing in the sense that the Delhi death rates have suddenly taken off but we suddenly have a spike over there. Otherwise it's more or less follows the number of deaths that we have seen in other places that roughly about two weeks after the infections have taken a certain shape, certain numbers you will see the death rate really tracks that. It means normally the deaths start showing up after two weeks of the infection start showing up. So if there is a spike of infections today you will see a spike of deaths after about two weeks. This is roughly what we seem to show. See and of course the states which have high death rates are the ones which have also shown high infections but the Pradesh is high in this. So is Gujarat, again Ahmedabad and so is Maharashtra. The three places which have taken off Delhi the death rates were lower earlier but now we can see there is a spike in Delhi death rates as well. So these are the things we'll have to study and of course you also have Rajasthan but the death rate is not looking very good. You have Uttar Pradesh, the death rates are not seem to be climbing. So we'll have to watch these places but it is also important for us to register one particular thing which is that we are seeing figures today both in terms of infections and death rates which are a consequence of the six weeks odd lockdown we have had and it is once the lockdown that is lifted then we are going to see are the infections spreading or spiking again? And that will be the big test because we are not in complete control of the infections in the reproductive rates that's been talked of in the region of 1.2 to 1.3 somewhere in between. If that is your reproductive rate that means one person still infects more than one person in terms of the multiplication of the numbers. So if I infect one plus another 30% that means three people are going to infect roughly four people. That means the infection still continue to grow but it is all smaller space. So the lockdown has slowed the infections but it has not put the infection rate below one which is what you need to control the pandemic. And if you don't do that on top of that we have to now lift partially lift the lockdown we cannot continue like this. Then if we do not take care of where the infection clusters are and how we handle it again the reproductive rate from the current 1.2 or 2.1.3 that we are seeing it can still jump to 1.5 or two which means we'll be back where we were before the lockdown. So that is the most important issue right now that instead of controlling the numbers if the numbers are already such that our numbers are continuing to grow then how do you have an intelligent lockdown? This is the key question. Unfortunately, we have no indication what the government is thinking. We have only fiat which are coming from the home ministry which says lockdown the following area lockdown this district's lockdown that town. So these kinds of messages that are coming do not tell us what the government's real plans or real mandobas is what are their arrangements they're going to do? Looking at it from our point of view and we have been discussing this issue with other experts or modeling experts it's very clear that lockdowns are never going to solve the problem of bringing the disease within control. China has shown in Wuhan it was very clear they had with lockdown a relatively very stringent lockdown even then they had a reproductive rate of 1.27 and they could bring it down below one only because they also took up a whole set of measures which is thorough testing continuous testing of the people contact tracing which we are also doing and then isolating those who are infected and of course taking care of them in the hospitals properly and lastly also seeing that the hospital staff are fully equipped with protective equipment so they did not become the vectors of disease themselves which is what we seem to see in India we saw that in Italy we're seeing that in the United States that the frontline workers whether it's the people who run the hospitals clean the hospitals, look after the patients the nurses and the doctors other health professionals they are the ones who get infected and of course infect other patients and also the people they come in contact with which could be people at home and so on so this is the last part point that we'd like to stress that unless we protect our health workers not only is it bad for them that we lose the people who are fighting the disease they're in the front lines but we also make them carriers of further infections which is certainly not the way to control the epidemic I will end with this what I started with we need much more testing yes we are testing about 100,000 per day but if we want to control the lifting of the long-term or even a partial lifting of the long-term focusing on the clusters where we still see hot spots we really have to extend our testing much more and that is a message we leave you with that yes we have slowed down the pandemic it's not that lockdown has not been effective it has been it slowed down the epidemic otherwise we would have had seen much larger figures I'm not going to speculate what those figures are I don't think it's even possible to speculate on these figures but it certainly would have been much larger after two weeks we'll see the effect of the lockdown because the disease takes about two weeks to show up really in the new clusters so we'll have to keep our fingers crossed how we handle the lockdown the post lockdown period lifting of the lockdown period is going to be fought with a lot of danger and what we do in this period all of us not just the government that will determine the trajectory of the pandemic my only submission and this is something that we have all been saying for a long time that the government needs to take the state governments and the people into confidence how it is fighting the epidemic have much more transparency than it is showing and if that does not happen we will not be able to control the pandemic through just central government feats alone which is the way the government seems to be traveling thank you very much for being with us watching news click do keep to come to our website and do see our shows