Coronavirus Pandemic – India Endures another Grim Milestone of 5M Cases

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Since August, India has been the world's epicenter when it started to eclipse the daily counts of the then frontrunner Brazil. 

Today, it hit a new milestone of 5M confirmed cases, solidly occupying the second position.

At the beginning of June, India was in the seventh position with a total caseload of 191K. Its daily average jumped threefold to 35.8K in July, nearly doubling to 64.4K in August and a rocketing to 88.7K in the first two weeks of September. 

Lately, its daily caseload has been hovering around 90K.

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India's deaths remain horrific, reaching a total of 82K as of this post on 9/15. Again, while the daily deaths averaged 345 in June, it jumped to 616 in July, 928 in August, and a whopping 1,118 thus far in September. Though it occupies the second position in case counts, it remains number three in total death tolls, behind Brazil and the US. Since all these three countries are still registering around 1K daily deaths, it is difficult to predict if India would eventually surge past them.

 

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The regression between the daily cases and daily deaths demonstrates a near-perfect linear relationship, confirming the simultaneous surge, unlike in the US, where deaths significantly trailed during the resurgence in August. Except for a handful of outliers, the fit is pretty tight; nonetheless, the r-squared value representing the collinearity is relatively high. 

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Despite the recent surge, India's death rate remains the lowest among the ten hardest-hit countries. Likewise, its population-level death rate also remains extremely low. On the other hand, it has a less than sellar testing credential and a moderate positivity rate, further contributing to the surge.

India needs to peak and taper shortly to avoid running into the coming flu season, which could be even more deadly.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_India

-Sid Som
homequant@gmail.com