Covid in India Approaching Worst Case Scenario
The numbers coming out of the world’s largest democracy are stunning as Covid in India reaches global records in new cases.
Inside a Delhi hospital, oxygen runs fatally short as covid cases mount.
WaPo:
India weathered a major surge in coronavirus infections last September, approaching almost 100,000 new infections a day, but then it dropped off dramatically leading many to think the virus had been beaten.Starting in March, however, the number of new cases has grown exponentially and topped 300,000 for the past four days. On Sunday it was announced that there had been 349,691 new cases in the last 24 hours — another global record. There were also 2,767 reported deaths, the highest for India.
Experts caution, however, that the figures are all an undercount in this vast nation of more than 1.3 billion.
The recent surge has been attributed to a degree of complacency as people and officials assumed the virus had been beaten, lifted restrictions and returned to old habits, as well as the emergence of new more virulent variants.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed support India and said the United States was looking for ways to help the country.
“Our hearts go out to the Indian people in the midst of the horrific COVID-19 outbreak. We are working closely with our partners in the Indian government, and we will rapidly deploy additional support to the people of India and India’s health care heroes,” he tweeted.
The comment comes amid calls from Indians for the United States to do more, including one by the head of India’s largest vaccine manufacturer for the lifting of a U.S. ban on exporting raw materials to make the doses.
The surge has been devastating for the nation’s health infrastructure and in hard hit cities like the capital New Delhi it is extremely difficult to find available hospital beds. There have also been fatalities in some hospitals as oxygen supplies have been disrupted or run out.
Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced Sunday that the city’s lockdown would be extended another week until May 3.
During the prime minister’s radio address, he spoke with a doctor from Mumbai who urged people not to panic and suggested that the situation was manageable.
“The second wave came very fast. It is spreading faster. But the recovery rate is also faster. In this phase, young people and children are also being infected,” said Shashank Joshi.
However, deaths are at record levels and increasing at an exponential rate.
Cities are also reporting stunningly high positive rates for coronavirus tests. In Delhi, 1 in 3 people tested are positive while in the eastern city of Kolkata that number soars to 50 percent.
Amid the mounting health crisis, the government is moving to vaccinate people as quickly as possible, though the sheer size of the population makes it a daunting task.
On Sunday, the Health Ministry said more than 140 million vaccine doses had been administered in just 99 days, which it described as worldwide record.
In his speech, Modi said that starting May 1, anyone over the age of 18 would be eligible for the vaccine.
This is nightmarish. Setting aside the pure human toll of this mess; this roiling mass of infections with the vaccines now being sprayed into it strikes me as absolutely terrifying. I’m no expert in medical science but isn’t this close to the definition of an environment where a vaccine busting variant of Covid could have the maximal odds of emerging? Jesus agnostic Christ!Report
I don’t think viruses react to vaccines quite like they do antibiotics. The human immune system is pretty good at “Hey, that looks suspiciously like something I’ve seen before”, and since we’re targeting the spike protein that allows for infection in the first place (so that significant changes to avoid immune response are likely to maladapt for infection)….
It’s more “eroding vaccine efficacy” rather than suddenly seeing strains that laugh at your immune response — that is, you’d see vaccinated folks more and more likely to get a mild case of COVID-19, rather than have outright immunity, as their immune systems already have a leg up.
As such, you’d want to retune the vaccine to the dominant strains — similar to yearly flu vaccines, but mRNA, to get more outright immunity and less mild cases. Given the vaccine options we have now and the wealth of research data, updating at least the mRNA ones should be fairly easy to test and push through.
It’s certainly not optimal, of course. Killing this off like polio would be optimal. I don’t think that was ever in the cards for COVID-19. Of course having a raging outbreak with only a portion of the population infected is probably as worst case as you can get if you HAVE a vaccine.
I just don’t think immune systems and vaccines are directly comparable to antibiotics and bacteria in terms of exactly how they “resist” each other.Report
I earnestly hope you are right but, like you said, this is the worse case scenario either way. I don’t want our current stable of vaccines to be shot willy nilly into a raging pandemic inferno. I want them overwhelmingly deployed to summarily crush or forestall pandemics.Report
India’s covid fatalities per million people is about 10% of the hardest-hit countries. Still, the completely “unbent” exponential curve in the current data (both new cases and deaths) and the very low percentage of the population vaccinated are worrying. Guu is right that the worst-case scenario with a virus that kills 1% of its victims is only a 1% death toll, but still it’s got the makings of a tragedy.Report
As I understand it, it is 1% under the assumption that the population has access to hospital care. If they do not, it turns into 4%. It seems India is at a point where their hospitals are so overburdened their death rate is going to climb to that 4%.
Absolutely horrific.Report
4% is actually low-balling it, as an overloaded healthcare system can’t handle regular healthcare problems, so you start seeing excess deaths from other causes as well.Report
I was addressing the concerns of a comment that’s since disappeared.
There are a lot of factors. A younger, less-obese population with less access to health care across some of the world’s extremes of high and low population density? Any non-expert is only guessing. The fatality rate will be closer to 1% than 70%, but even so, 1% of India is an enormous number.Report