India’s Covid-19 Infection Rate Is Low Because Testing Continues To Be Low

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I have been doing Data Analytics Studies on the Coronavirus Pandemic for 48 days and have written 117 research-based blog posts on COVID-19 in these 48 days. The graph here has data for 25 countries, which together had a total of 2,934,235 COVID-19 cases as of a few minutes ago, or 85.7% of all 3,424,210 cases worldwide, and are therefore a good reference sample. China is not part of this Study as it does not report Testing Data.

Almost every day, I see several newspaper or TV reports trying to prove that India is far less affected by Coronavirus than many other countries, especially in the Western world. I also see reports of how our testing has increased 24 times or 33 times in the last month. I have no doubt that all of this is Modi government propaganda. Let us see how much of it is actually true.

If you look at the graph, yes, it is right that, of the 25 countries, India, with 27.6 cases per million residents, has fewer cases than all countries except Nigeria. But don’t miss out on the fact that India has done less tests per million (715) than all countries other than Bangladesh (467), Indonesia (399), and Nigeria (78).

Surely, India cannot be expected to have the same “Infection Rate” (number of cases per million) as Spain (5,254) or Belgium (4,291) or USA (3,440) or Canada (1,472) or even Saudi Arabia (743), when we have only done 715 tests per million, which is lower than even Pakistan’s 895.

The correlation between Infection Rate (black towers in the graph) and Testing Rate (green towers) is quite clear by looking at the graph. Yes, there is no doubt that India has managed the disease well by imposing a lockdown quite early. But doing just 30,000 to 40,000 tests per day is not really the answer for a country with 1.366 billion people. To catch up with the average 19,726 tests/million already done by the Top 17 countries in terms of Testing Rate (of the 25), which are also doing 410 new tests per million daily, we need to do 216,885 Tests per Day for the next 120 days. Can we do it?

Let’s Talk About Mortality Rates

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LATEST UPDATES (at 2:00 pm UTC):

  • The world has crossed 3.426 million cases
  • The Top 23 countries have together crossed 3 million cases
  • The global death toll is over 240,400
  • India has reached 37,885 cases and 1,231 deaths as per covid19india.org
  • In terms of rank in no. of cases, India is at No.16 (up from No.22 on April 14)
  • India’s Maharashtra state, with 11,506 cases, would rank No.35 in the world if it were a country (up from No.44 on April 24)
  • Russia overtook Turkey to reach No.7 rank in number of cases
  • Peru became the 14th country to cross 40,000 cases
  • 6 countries have crossed 150,000 cases (up from 1 on April 8)
  • 11 countries have crossed 75,000 cases (up from 4 on April 3)
  • 20 countries have crossed 25,000 cases (up from 11 on April 3)
  • 29 countries have crossed 15,000 cases (up from 16 on April 16)
  • 37 countries have crossed 10,000 cases (up from 23 on April 16)
  • 43 countries have crossed 7,500 cases (up from 26 on April 16)
  • 51 countries have crossed 5,000 cases (up from 20 on April 16)

  • 5 countries have 20,000+ deaths (up from just 1 on April 3)
  • 9 countries have 5000+ deaths (up from 5 on April 3)
  • 14 countries have 2500+ deaths (up from 7 on April 3)
  • 22 countries have 1000+ deaths (up from 10 on April 3)
  • 27 countries have 500+ deaths (up from 16 on April 16)

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