India Coronavirus Dispatch: Non-experts must stop speculating on the virus

Surat diamond units reel under Covid, Delhi's well-planned battle, panic in Mumbai, which accounts for disproportionately high number of cases and deaths--news on how India is coping with the pandemic

Diamond woes: Surat’s famed diamond industry is reeling under the effects of coronavirus, despite the fact that a quarter of the units having been functioning the past two months. Thousands of workers are yet to return. Those who are in Surat are working under the looming threat of unemployment. The business itself has taken a hit: its losses are pegged at Rs 30,000 crore. Imports declined 52 per cent between January and June, while exports dipped 40 per cent in the same period. Besides, because of social distancing norms, the industry hasn’t been able to hit pre-Covid production levels. Infection outbreaks within the industry have further added to their long list of problems. Traders are now looking at Diwali with some hope. Read more here.

Delhi model: A lot has happened in Delhi. In a shocking statement made on June 9, Delhi’s Deputy CM Manish Sisodia had said the National Capital would need 550,000 beds by the end of July. Soon, the Union home minister stepped in as the state and central administration joined hands to fight the pandemic. On August 7, the number of available beds in Delhi were 13,557. Delhi’s success is in part because of ramping up testing and treating capacities. On June 18, the administration also decided to employ the quicker antigen tests. The centre also stepped in and capped testing prices in the capital. Simultaneously, infrastructure was beefed up. The government also showed willingness to experiment as it took up plasma treatment on a large scale. Read more here.

Karnataka improves: Karnataka touched 200,000 confirmed cases on Thursday. Karnataka, for quite some time, had the highest growth rate in the country before Andhra Pradesh took over. Both the southern states hit 100,000 cases on the same day, July 27, but Andhra Pradesh has been adding more cases daily since then. More than 50 per cent of the cases in Karnataka are concentrated in Bengaluru. In the last two weeks, however, the state has shown signs of improvement. Its growth rate in the first week of July was 8.5 per cent per day and has now come down to 3.4 per cent. Read more here.

Long Read

Fear and panic in Mumbai: On August 12, Mumbai alone had over 5.4 per cent of India’s caseload. The city also clocked in a disproportionate amount of deaths — 15 per cent of the country’s total count. A major factor driving this high mortality rate and caseload is the severe shortage of healthcare infrastructure in India’s richest city. The first warning came very early on in the outbreak: Mumbai’s network of private clinics run by general practitioners collapsed immediately. The burden fell entirely on government hospitals which are marked by inadequate facilities. What followed was a series of tragic incidents as patients were left lying in hospital parking lots, many senior citizens were turned away from multiple hospitals and in some cases, the families were asked to arrange for ventilators themselves! Read the ground report here.

Comment

Non-specialists should shut up: In this column, the writer argues that scientists with specialities in fields other than those relevant to the study of infectious diseases should avoid speculating about the pandemic. It’s epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease modellers who are trained to work on viral outbreaks such as this one. Every other medical branch plays nothing more than an auxiliary role in managing the disease, she says. While dealing with a new virus, and hence a new disease, it’s crucial to keep in mind that general medical advice will be vastly different from the specific one coming from a field expert. She rues the fact that multiple scientists around the world, including physicists and astronomers, have published papers discussing transmission models and testing strategies. Read more here.

Amplifying ignorance: In another column calling out the dangers of unqualified speculation about the disease, the writer says ignorant statements from influential people are incredibly harmful. He warns about the dangers of people losing trust in public healthcare advice after confusion caused by unscientific and ignorant remarks. This has serious implications if considered from the prism of Prospect theory which postulates that people tend to pick the riskier option when in dilemma. In people’s minds, the probability of catching the virus is based on their ill-informed perception of the virus. Ignorant statements and speculation from influential people could thus lead them to take highly questionable and potentially dangerous decisions. Read more here.

Understanding Covid-19

Long Covid: For one in 10 people infected by the virus, the symptoms persist for much longer than what has been estimated to be the general time period of the disease. Understanding on the effects of ‘Long Covid’ is still sparse as experts are just waking up to the phenomenon. In these cases, some symptoms such as breathlessness, psychological distress and fatigue, along with a decline in memory, focus and a general reduction in quality of life has been noticed. In some hospitalised patients, PTSD symptoms were also noticed. Fatigue is most common symptom noticed in the study conducted on these patients, followed by breathlessness. Read more here.