29/05/2021
55% of new cases from Karnataka, TN, Kerala, Andhra & Telangana
In the last 24 hours, 186,364 new Covid-19 cases were reported in the country. Of this, 101,522, or 55%, were from the five southern states. At present, seven states in India have over 100,000 active cases.
Over half of fresh cases reported are from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, even as cases in Delhi and Maharashtra, the two major Covid-19 drivers, have started declining.
In the last 24 hours, 186,364 new Covid-19 cases were reported in the country. Of this, 101,522, or 55%, were from the five southern states. At present, seven states in India have over 100,000 active cases. Four are southern states, with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu overtaking Maharashtra.
As of Friday, Karnataka has 402,224 and Tamil Nadu 313,048 active cases. Andhra Pradesh and Kerala figures are also relatively substantial, though Keral’s daily new cases have almost halved from what it was a week ago. The second wave has followed almost the same trajectory as the first. Mumbai and Delhi were the first hotspots exhibiting high transmission levels and later the infection was concentrated in the south.
“The onset of the second wave in the southern states has been later than states like Maharashtra and Delhi. The pattern suggests the cases would gradually come down over the next two weeks. The virus has followed, more or less, the same trajectory as the first, with outbreaks first in Mumbai and Delhi and then moving southwards,” Public Health Foundation of India’s Giridhara R Babu told ET.
IIT Kanpur’s Manindra Agrawal, who has developed a mathematical model to predict Covid-19 trajectory, says, “Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are already showing a decline in cases. The reduction is not significant, but it in a week it will be more pronounced. The second wave will start tapering off.” His mode, Sutra, has predicted that by end of June the second wave would finally be over. “Andhra Pradesh is exhibiting a different trend, where the curve flattens around the peak and it could go either way.” Even with more cases, the death ratio of the five states are below the all-India average.
Telangana’s numbers stand out among southern states but Babu attributes the low caseload to poor testing. “Testing is the key in detection. This is the main reason why there is a difference between other states and Telangana. The testing in Telangana is poor. Even Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka had better tests per million in the first wave than now; they are testing far less. In most states, 50% of the testing is done in the capital city and urban districts. The remaining 50% remains distributed across rural districts of the state. Therefore, you see poor detection in rural areas.” While neighbouring Andhra Pradesh reported 16,167 cases on Thursday, Telangana reported 3,614 new cases.
Babu suggests incentivising states to detect cases so that “culture of data collection” is transformed. “This can be done by incentivising detection and not penalising those who report. This is how it was done for polio, when India followed a syndromic approach. Districts were asked to find acute flaccid paralysis in children (onset of weakness or paralysis). If the districts did not find one case per million, it was clear its surveillance system was not working efficiently. This exercise had to be done repeatedly and a large population combed through by strict review, resulting in world-class surveillance programme.
