Can India Survive The Coronavirus - The Truth.?

Actually now what matters the most is that India needs to be very clear about how to deal with the coronavirus and the most important aspect of this is our coronavirus testing strategy. This can save or cost a lot of lives in India. Now take a look at this- since the beginning of February, India has conducted close to 12,000 tests ; Compare this with South Korea that has so far conducted over two and a half lakh tests often as many as 10,000 tests in a day. India has conducted just 5 to 10 tests per million people whereas Korea has conducted more than 4000 tests per million people. Clearly Korea and India have two very different approaches to testing so what is India's logic for doing this limited amount of testing for coronavirus?
 

The Indian Council for Medical Research says right now they are doing symptomatic testing and what is that they test? Those who have travelled from countries which have a high rate of coronavirus which has now of course become a lot of countries and all those who have come in contact with someone who's tested positive. So it's people with a travel history or a contact history and among those people they prioritize those showing the corona symptoms of dry cough, fever, shortness of breath. Now the problem with this is because we are testing less we may not be identifying all the positive cases that there may be or we may not be doing it fast enough.

That is really something to worry about because it might result in us becoming another Italy which is the country worst hit by the corona virus. We all know that. Today Italy is under full lockdown and in panic but did you know that very recently on the 15th of February Italy had only three positive cases and South Korea had 28? Korea today has less than nine thousand positive cases and less than ninety dead which is wayless than Italy what was the one thing Korea did right that Italy didn't?? Korea did a lot of testing and here's what we in India need to note unlike what India is doing right now.
 

South Korea chose to test everyone who had the symptoms and not just those with travel and contact history. Equally importantly they made sure they had the capacity to test people in such large numbers. They started to raise their testing capacity from january itself. On the other hand Italy delayed mass testing, delayed quarantining and is paying a heavy price so I asked again "Should India do what Korea did?"

Some are arguing that given a huge population the current number of around 300+ positive cases is not large but here's the point- This number may be small because we do not know how many more people are positive because we are simply not testing enough. If you look at Trump's America, initially Trump was dismissive about testing about lock down, about self-quarantine. As a result the US government's volume of testing too was very low and now the USA has 10,000 cases and over 150 people dead and that number is mounting at the moment.

India has seen less than 10 Corona deaths so right now is the right time for us to decide clearly who and who . At the moment the corona pandemic is at stage 2 in India where it is spreading in small numbers and when I upload this blog it will already reach stage 3 which is when it starts to affect larger groups of people in bigger numbers. That stage is also described as community transmission. What most experts tell us is that stage 3 will happen and the number of positive cases will rise in big numbers.

Therefore the question that stands out is "Is the Indian government's testing strategy ready for that stage 3???" Our  government says it has been conducting random tests among people with no travel of contact history, they say , around a thousand such people have been tested and so far no one has tested positive for coronavirus and because of that for now the government is sticking to its strategy of symptomatic testing, that is, I repeat testing only those with the travel and contact history plus showing symptoms. So here's another question- "Is the Indian government standing by this less testing strategy because we actually don't have the capacity for mass testing? That we would not be able to mass test our citizens even if it became the need of the hour tomorrow???"

A renowned article has done some maths which suggests if the government lab tested to their full capacity of 6,000 tests per day India would run out of testing kits in less than four weeks. Now we can only hope that that is not the real reason for testing less. Another doubt raised by the same article that here is the Ministry of Health's own definition of suspected cases of coronavirus:-  It says those with severe respiratory illnesses that cannot be explained by any other cause must be considered as suspect cases for COVID19 even if they do not have any travel or contact history but as we know and as government health officials have said repeatedly to the media so far they are not testing anyone without a travel and contact history.

 

So are they taking a big risk by not following their own guidelines- We can't say so. Finally so far our numbers are not spiking. Most states have shut down several public spaces and quarantined themselves from all foreign entries. Massive awareness campaigns are on, even more testing kits are being sourced and all this together should help. We all really hope we have got our Corona testing strategy right. Now keep washing those hands and keep those fingers crossed... See you next time!