Are we falling behind on basics as vaccine optimism takes centre stage?

Daily Covid-19 deaths did not fall considerably in November, but vaccine news has excited the market and governments, with immunisation plans seemingly underway

As Covid-19 nears a year of lab-confirmed existence in humanity, the world is seemingly closing in on safe and effective vaccines that are supposed to prevent serious complications and loss of life from the coronavirus infection. Trials being conducted by US biotech and Pharma majors Moderna and Pfizer, UK’s AstraZeneca, and India’s Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila are showing good results, and some strong contenders may emerge in the next few months, or even weeks. 

So much is the confidence inspired by the vaccine, that governments all over, and the Central and state governments in India have begun the ground work already. Reports are being prepared, lists are being drawn, exclusion criteria are being decided as a part of the vaccine policy. 

We were complacent from January to March, locked down the country from April to June, gradually opened up the economy from July to September, and as we come close to facing Covid-19 for a full year, talks about re-emergence of localised lockdowns are back. In the US and some European countries, the disease is wreaking havoc for the nth time now. 

But as vaccine optimism gains traction in India and around the world, are we losing out on the very basic requirements of curbing the spread of the virus?

Official data on three key Covid-19 indicators give three takeaways.

Firstly, we are still losing 500 Indians to the disease daily, despite the fact that active cases are largely declining every day. There was a blip in the last few days when active cases rose—exactly a fortnight after the festive time of Diwali—but they are falling again. But daily deaths are not going below 500, is a scary statistic.  

Secondly, though active cases are coming down, India has been adding at least 40,000 new infections daily for more than four months. Though we are at a safe distance from touching the peak of 100,000 new cases a day in September, a sizeable number of infections is still surfacing daily. The chart uses a 7-day moving average of new daily cases. 

As the government has been saying repeatedly in its press conferences, India’s cases and deaths per million population are low compared to western countries. 

But when compared to Asian peers, India has the worst case and death rate, according to analysis by economist and former chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu. 

Thirdly, while deaths do not come down and cases remain significantly large, tests performed daily are not growing but have rather stabilised near 1 million per day for about three months. 

In addition to this, about 40 per cent of all tests conducted to date are the rapid antigen tests, whose accuracy is considerably lower than the sensitive RT-PCR test. 

State and city officials who spoke to Business Standard, however, said that the RAT kits are proving extremely important due to their easy portability to rural areas, lower cost, and quick results. 

A Pune doctor who is working in Covid-19 mitigation explained briefly the new two-stage strategy that is under works in the city.  

“We are focusing more on thermal screening, and only those who have a temperature that represents fever, are being tested,” he said. 

“We are using RAT tests as a mask, and using RTPCR with caution due to limited resources. If a person is Covid positive on RAT, we do not perform RTPCR. If he is RAT negative but symptomatic, only then we prescribe RTPCR,” he added. 

Another person in the knowledge of states’ strategies said that states are now using data on seroprevalence for two purposes: one, to decide where to test, and two, to carve out areas which should take precedence in immunisation.