Uddhav Thackeray led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) seems to have got the lockdown right. Maharashtra Covid-19 cases peaked at 455,689 on April 26th and have since shown a decline to 391,314 per week, a 10% decline on the previous 7 days. As per the COVID-19 tracker of the UK based Total Analysis Group, India’s Covid-19 cases numbers continue to soar but the worst affected region Maharashtra is showing a small sign of recovery.
Maharashtra, Chattisgarh (-2.7%) and Ladakh (- 28%) are the only two states and one Union Territory in India to show a weekly decline. Other states like Kerala, Goa and Assam continue to grow at 90%, or more, per week, and some smaller states at over 300%. India has certainly not reached its peak yet in terms of Covid-19 cases and continues to grow at 36.7% week-on-week.
“India has seven of the worst affected regions in the world with Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and four others all registering over 1 million Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic,” states the tracker analysis.
India’s COVID-19 death rates spiralling
As per the tracker, the death rate shows no sign of abating.There are 18,634 officially recorded deaths in the last week in India. This figure is likely to be hugely understated as thousands of deaths are being reported outside of hospitals and India is facing a huge humanitarian crisis. The official testing figures seem to fluctuate a great deal giving rise to the belief that India has not monitored the pandemic well enough to keep it under control.
India a laggard in vaccination drive
India’s vaccination drive began in early the January and has so far reached just over 11% of the adult population. India lags significantly behind many of the leading nations, despite the fact that India is producing a significant supply of the global vaccines. Since the start of the vaccination programme Covid-19 cases have increased by 75% and the official deaths have increased by 35%, but the real figure is likely to be nearer 75% increase.
Indian Govrnment’s unreliable statistics
India ranked 73rd out of 100 leading countries for its transparency over Covid-19 data, registering a 33% reliability ratio as per see TotalAnalysis Covid Data Transparency Index. As per the tracker analysis, “the Indian Ministry of Health provides national and regional Covid-19 numbers for active, recovered and deaths but does not actually provide official Covid-19 cases, which have to be calculated from these numbers. There is a great deal of concern that these figures do not provide an accurate reflection of the true figures in India, particularly around the death figure, which has been highlighted by the current crisis in India. There are no official figures for hospitalisation, or ICU patients, and it has been hard to gauge the full extent of the crisis without these figures. Clearly the lack of oxygen in the country is highlighting the urgent need for India to improve its health management data. The poor management of the Covid-19 crisis, and its data, by the Indian Government, and the Ministry of Health, has been highlighted by the devastating humanitarian crisis now facing India.”