Do you know how many Coronavirus cases India could have in 75 days from now? For that matter, does anyone know?
Here are some projections, purely based on a simple mathematical analysis of the reported Coronavirus (COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 / 2019-nCoV) of the last 20 days.
If the rate of growth (of reported cases) remains as per what we have seen in these past 20 days, we could have as few as 29,245,658 (2.92 crore) cases, or as many as 705,205,850 (70.52 crore) cases in the next 75 days.
Which number is more likely will depend on what we witness in the next 21 days – if the 21-day number is closer to 13,000-14,000, we would have closer to the lower numbers projected for the 75-day mark.
The actual number will also depend on how many tests we are able to do over the next 75 days. Considering that only 2.76% of Indians have tested positive, compared to about 7.5% worldwide, as many as 1,059,625,000 people will have to be tested, or 77.6% of India’s total population. That’s definitely not going to happen, as we are only testing about 2,100 people per day. Even if we increase this to 2,500 tests per day, it means that only 187,500 tests will be performed in the next 75 days, and at the current average of 2.76% positive cases, we will only have 5,175 new cases.
Let’s look at it another way. The 5 countries that have been most active in testing (Spain, Australia, South Korea, Switzerland, and Italy) have done an average of 6,731 tests per million. If India is to achieve that average, we would conduct 9,183,700 tests and get 253,470 positive cases. However, this is not possible as those 5 countries have an average population of only 38.461 million, much much smaller than India.
So there is no point in assuming that we can achieve their testing velocity. What then? Can we achieve the testing velocity of China, Russia, Malaysia, Turkey, Vietnam, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, Philippines, and Mexico, countries that are not as developed than the 5 named in the previous para? The average population of these 10 countries is 252.443 million, which is much more apt to compare with India. These 10 countries have conducted 3.062 million tests, or an average of 1,213 per million. If India is to achieve that average, we would conduct 1,657,465 tests and get 45,746 positive cases.
ALL WE CAN DO IS WAIT AND WATCH.