Statsguru: Covid-19 fears return; vaccination rates still low in India

Chaotic scenes from China have raised fears of the Covid-19 pandemic making a comeback.  The country is going through its worst Covid-19 patch even though the numbers are being questioned. More people have been infected with the virus since August than was the case in the entirety of the previous pandemic period. China reportedly faced 37 million cases of Covid-19 in a day and has stopped publishing daily numbers, though official data had earlier suggested a decline (chart 1).

Global cases have also seen an increase with other nations such as Japan, US and South Korea witnessing rising numbers. The surge in global numbers has been more pronounced since November. Deaths are also showing an uptick (chart 2). India, however, has not witnessed the same trends. The number of cases as well as deaths have both been in decline even in the recent past. Most of December has seen death numbers in single digits (chart 3).

Lower case numbers could be an outcome of limited testing. India used to test nearly 400,000 samples at the beginning of August 2022. This has since come down to about 100,000 (chart 4).

Any surge in global cases may affect India more than many other peer countries. Fewer Indians have received the third dose of the vaccine than Brazil, China, or the world at large. Russia is an exception. Others have double, triple or even higher rates of boosters given out per 100 people (chart 5).

Worryingly, the rate of vaccinations has not seen a rise even in the last few days amid the news from China. India vaccinated close to 20 million people weekly in the beginning of August 2022. This has since dropped to around 400,000 vaccinations a day.

Around 50 per cent of people over 60 years of age are fully vaccinated. Vaccination is significantly lower for the rest of the country.
 

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StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headline