Covid-19 and complacency

Variable reporting and testing standards obscure the big picture

Delhi is an outlier among India’s major cities with the number of Covid-19 infections surging daily to over 5,000 even as Mumbai and Kolkata record fewer than 1,000. Information technology capital Bengaluru peaked in mid-October and has been falling since to about 2,000 cases a day — about the same as the whole of Tamil Nadu. Remarkably, Uttar Pradesh appears to be at the same level. In fact, Delhi and Mizoram are the only two states where the number of Covid-19 cases has shown an increase over the past two weeks compared to the previous fortnight — though in terms