 Hello and welcome to NewsClick and today we're going to be talking about COVID-19 or the coronavirus disease. To talk more about this, we have with us Praveer Purkayashta. Praveer, so the number of cases has crossed 110,000 and there are some bright spots of course, the number of cases in China is still showing a steady decline. On the other hand, there is Europe which is becoming, it is increasingly becoming a hot spot and then there's a great unknown that's the United States with the number of cases. So before we go into each of the regions specifically, could you talk a bit about the global picture as of today? Well as of today what you said is right, China figures are continuously coming down so it's clearly controlled the infections. It's also true that Hubei province which is the one which was majorly hit, even there the numbers are continuously falling. In fact, they are figure now numbering less than 100 per day. So what we are seeing is that the things that China did work and we'll come back to this later. But as you said, Europe has now exploded with Italy really being the first major country which is not only seeing a huge blow up of numbers but also number of deaths have increasing rapidly. Now what that seems to show is that the it was the disease was really not tracked early enough and that's why the serious cases now are coming to the hospitals and the death rates are so much higher. Now that extensive testing is taking place in Italy, we see as you can see from the details Italy is now declared a lockdown. Lockdown is not only Lombardy but also other regions. So they are following what China had done which is locking down Wuhan, Gordon Sanitare around Wuhan and its major suburbs. So they seem to be following the same path. They have declared a lockdown. There's virtually very similar provisions are being used over there and they have been spooked by the fact that yesterday both the death rates and the new infections really spiked very high and this has been a continuous increase that has been taking place. Italy is one country which is showing every day bigger and bigger numbers. Now South Korea we saw this earlier, the numbers were spiking up but after that it has now come down after the extensive testing which they have done. South Koreans in fact have been able to test at least 10,000 per day and they say they will increase up to 20,000. They have drive-in tests where you can actually drive in, give your tests and go. So all of this seems to be the the measures which are really required. More than that there is now a clear indication that it's not really an issue of closing air travel which is what Mr Trump still keeps on talking about how great we did by stopping air travel but really social distancing which breaks the transmissibility of the disease and that's what brought the numbers down in China. So if you look at it what China had done they had reduced transmissibility by social distancing and that's what now Italy is trying to do as well. I think that's the only way that you can really tame the virus because you don't have a vaccine for the next 12 months at least. So the only way you can do it is social distancing, cutting down to all tribals, cutting down the meetings, large scale meetings, events, all of this, schools, universities being shut down, cinema halls being shut down, all places where people can come in fact large numbers. So that is one element of it and the second element which is also something that Italy needs to do which China has done which is intensive care support really needs to extend itself and you have to have the beds which are available in hospitals. The public health system has to be geared up for this and that's a challenge Italy is right now facing. And Italy is only the in some senses maybe the tip of the iceberg because France and Germany are also seeing a huge rise in the number of cases. There's Spain of course and the UK is also seeing a slight slow but steady increase nonetheless. So what we're looking at perhaps is the fact that the whole of the European continent which is which has there are no real borders, there's a lot of free movement among these countries. It's a possibility of an explosion is quite high. You see the European Union is the really what you are seeing and therefore Germany, Spain, France were much more tightly coupled with Italy, both in terms of back and forth tourists travel and so on. This is where you are likely to see the immediate secondary effect of what's happening in Italy. Also Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden all these countries are there but the major figures that we are now tending to see is like next is Germany and France. France and Germany both seem to be taking the earlier trajectory of Italy. So the distance is about three to five days what's happened in Italy could happen here. So how do you stop it? The stopping of it is now right now in Europe. They need to increase what China did social distancing. Second they need to lock down parts of Italy or any other part when you get a cluster. The third thing they have to do is extensive testing. So you in the community now it's community spread in all these countries including UK. So you need to find where the hot spots are the clusters are and interdict those clusters that you can do only when you've done extensive testing. Unfortunately Europe I don't know how they're failing but it doesn't look like that testing or the scale that China was able to do and South Korea is doing now. I think South Korea also has that very extensive testing and those are the kind of things that all countries will need to do and I think that's where the European Union is next challenge is plus as I said the hospital infrastructure because the number of deaths particularly for the older people are high and this is what you are going to see if the hospital infrastructure particularly the intensive care support is not yet right and here we have the great unknown as we refer to which is the United States and the response there from the government has been a mix of confusion bravado and a lot of inefficiency also including a flaw in the testing at the very early stage itself. So do you see the possibility that actually there are a lot more number of cases in the US which have not been which have not come out yet because of lack of testing? Well as you said it's a great unknown at the moment because even the public health experts and we have various experts on record saying unless we test we do not know and obviously this is a part of now the community spread that we are seeing almost most of the major areas are seeing clusters. Now in this clusters Washington state was a clear cluster outside Seattle or suburbs of Seattle you're seeing the cluster in New York row now you see the cluster in California so all of these are now seeing more and more clusters coming up so it's definitely a common community spread. There is a report which was bought now about two to three days old which says that Americans managed to test only 2,000 people now that is in the six weeks since the CDC sent out the defective test kits and then also further to that whatever the tests they have now said others can also do despite of that they claim there's only 2,000 tests which have been done. Now if extensive testing cannot be done we have no clue the number of people who might be there how many people are affected what are the new clusters developing and they don't seem to be moving in the direction of social distancing lockdowns and all of these things because they have claimed these are all authoritarian measures the Chinese did it's not required and as Mr. Trump said that we have done very well because you closed our air traffic with China but as we know now the traffic is from Italy it's from France it's from Germany and they don't seem to be testing on the border these people coming in either. So with all of this the US has become really the next possible case and one small indicator of that that unless we know the number of people we do not know deaths to infection ratio and the US also seems to show compared to the numbers infected a higher death. Now why that is so could be due to various reasons but that's unexplained data over there and the fact they have tested so little would seem to indicate that there is a huge gap between the number infected and the number tested. Last point I really have no idea why they rejected the WHO test and decided to redo their own tests now they have weakened their testing instead of the three genomic markers which the WHO test looks for which also CDC used to look for earlier they're now looking at only two markers and I still don't know why they have not been able to replicate what for us to South Korea has done what even India with our limited facilities we seem to have done more tests than what United States has done that's a very sad commentary on CDC which till now was recognized as the world's leader in combating infectious diseases. I think it's a combination of the fact they think it's a Chinese disease and therefore it will not really come to us that's one part of it and the second is the complete the gutting there of the CDC that has taken place over the last 10-15 years and particularly during the Trump administration where as Trump argued that what's the point of spending so much and preventive issues we should only fight when we need to fight so we should really cater to an expansion when we needed not before. This is the just-in-time philosophy of capitalism but the problem is when you talk of epidemics you have to deal with an epidemic before it is occurred it's not treating them in the hospital that's the issue that's really the epidemic of course there is an argument that this is the American way of dealing with high health care costs for the old because they can be effectively culled if this epidemic takes place I don't believe that is so because the people in head of all of this including Mr Trump are pretty old so I don't think that is really the philosophy but yes the kind of health care system the private health care system insurance driven health care system maybe that does not have an incentive to stop epidemic but that has an incentive to only fleece the people when when they get sick. Thank you so much for being that's all we have time for today keep watching NewsClick.