Why did COVID fail to take off in India and has now collapsed? Mystery plunge in coronavirus baffles experts
- At one point India looked as though it might surpass US with highest case toll
- But now country is reporting 11,000 cases a day, compared to peak of 100,000
- Scientists have suggested some areas of India have reached herd immunity or that Indians may have some preexisting protection from the virus
Scientists are trying to work out why coronavirus cases in India are falling when at one point it looked like the country might overtake the US as the worst-hit nation.
In September the country was reporting some 100,00 new cases per day, but that went into decline in October and is now sitting at around 10,000 per day - leaving experts struggling to explain why.
While the Indian government has been keen to put the apparent success down to its mask-wearing and social distancing laws, few believe these measures alone are responsible for the dip.
Instead, experts believe it may be down to the fact that India's largest cities have reached herd immunity, meaning the virus has moved to rural areas where it spreads slower and where cases and deaths are far less likely to be tested and logged.
A recent survey found 56 per cent of people in Delhi - the country's most-populous city - have Covid antibodies, which is likely to be an under-estimate with 70 per cent required for herd immunity.
Only around 20 per cent of deaths in India are medically certified - meaning 80 per cent do not have an official cause of death - with analysts warning the country may be under-counting its Covid fatalities by two or three times.
India also tests far less than developed nations, with medical experts warnings some states are relying on rapid lateral flow tests that give false-negative results.
Antibody surveys carried out in Mumbai, India's second-largest city, and Pune also showed antibodies in around 50 per cent of the population, The Times reported.
'The most densely-populated areas are already saturated and reaching the threshold of herd immunity, Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, told the paper.
'The virus has now spread to rural areas, but they are not so dense.'
Having a less-dense population means the virus spreads slower, which will naturally bring down daily case figures.
But with access to healthcare in rural India often lacking, it may also mean that many cases and deaths are going undetected.
Testing data for India shows that just 0.5 people per 1000 are swabbed each day - one of the lowest rates among countries that report such data.
More data released in September last year showed that people in rural areas are less-likely to be swabbed than those in cities - meaning that as the disease moves away from urban centres, the number of positive tests appears to decline.
The average number of tests carried out per day has also been falling across the whole of India since mid-December, which could also help to explain why positive test results have fallen.
And even those who are swabbed may be returning false-negative results, with doctors warning in September last year that many states are over-reliant on rapid lateral flow tests, which are unreliable.
Rijo John, a public health policy analyst, also warned that some states are failing to report which kind of tests are being used, further muddying the picture.
'More and more states are moving towards rapid antigen detection tests, which are known to have a high percentage of false negatives and not utilising the gold standard RT-PCR tests to full capacity,' he said.
'It should be made mandatory for all states to report the break[down] of different test types as well as the positives from these.'
Data also shows 80 per cent of Indians die at home, with no national requirement for a cause of death to be given before a body can be cremated or buried.
That has led experts to warn of a 'substantial' under-counting of deaths, with Dr Babu warning the true toll could be two or three times higher than the official count.
But others point to easing pressure on the country's hospitals as evidence that something other than an under-counting of cases and deaths in going on.
Some point to India's young population and relatively low rates of obesity as possible explanations.
The country has an average age of less than 30 with just 15 per cent of adults being overweight and 5 per cent obese, according to 2015 data.
By comparison, the US - which has been hardest-hit by Covid - has an average age of 38 with 32 per cent of adults overweight and 36 per cent obese.
Age and obesity are known to be two of the biggest factors increasing the likelihood that someone will fall seriously ill or die from Covid.
Other theories include that India has been dealing with less-virulent strains of the virus than those found in Europe, the US and parts of Africa.
India suspended all commercial flights in March last year, and while it has been operating 'travel corridors' since July, it has been quick to cut off routes to countries where dangerous new variants have emerged such as the UK.
That could have stopped the country suffering from spikes in infections like that seen in Britain after the so-called Kent Variant emerged, epidemiologists suggest.
Others believe that Indians, many of whom live in unsanitary conditions and suffer repeated waves of infections, have naturally resilient immune systems.
Jacob John, a prominent virologist at Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu state, said: '[India suffers] dengue, chikungunya, malaria, typhoid, cholera, dysenteries, influenza, so the "innate immune system" is trained to be on high alert.'
The country also has a far younger population than many western nations - with an average age under 30 - and has far lower rates of obesity, which are both major factors in serious Covid infections and deaths.
The success cannot be attributed to vaccinations since India only began administering jabs in January, with just seven million out of the country's 1.3billion population jabbed so far.
Experts have cautioned that even if herd immunity in some places is partially responsible for the decline, the population as a whole remains vulnerable - and must continue to take precautions.
This is especially true because new research suggests that people who got sick with one form of the virus may be able to get infected again with a new version.
A recent survey in Manaus, Brazil, that estimated that over 75% of people there had antibodies for the virus in October - before cases surged again in January.
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20代・30代の11名の女性によって立ち上げられたこのキャンペーンには、開始から1日で10万を超える賛同が集まりました。そして本日2月16日、JOCに15万を超える署名が提出されました。
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サイバーセキュリティ対応で、Windows買い替え促し儲けるビジネスモデルが
クラウドの普及で、終わったように
新型コロナウイルス対応で、ワクチン接種促し儲けるビジネスモデルが
脆弱性がデブ不摂生限定ということが知れ渡って、終わりそうですね
団長、なぜトランプ「弾劾」裁判だったんですか??
弾劾
アメリカ合衆国
アメリカ合衆国の弾劾裁判制度は、イギリスの制度を継承している。合衆国憲法第2条第4節によると、
大統領、副大統領及び合衆国の全ての文官は、反逆罪、収賄罪又は其の他の重罪及び軽罪に就き弾劾され、且つ有罪の判決を受けた場合は、其の職を免ぜられる。
ここでいう「合衆国のすべての文官」には行政官以外にも連邦裁判官も含まれると解釈されており、
現在までに弾劾が成立したケースは全て裁判官に対するものである[1]。
また行政官は公選職と政治任用職が対象とされており、それ以外の一般職員は弾劾対象とはなっていない。
下院が単純過半数の賛成に基づいて訴追し[2]、上院が裁判し、上院出席議員の2/3多数の賛成で弾劾を決定する[3]。しかしイギリスとは異なり、刑罰を科すことはなく、罷免するのみである[4]。
また弾劾裁判の対象に、国家元首である大統領も含まれている点に特徴がある。
アンドリュー・ジョンソン大統領とビル・クリントン大統領、ドナルド・トランプ大統領は下院による訴追決議の後、上院で弾劾裁判の審議がされたが、いずれも無罪判決を受けている。
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%BE%E5%8A%BE
弾劾裁判って「職」をやめさせるものではないの??
SARS-CoV SARS-CoV-2
感染症情報センター Infectious Disease Surveillance Center - IDSC Infectious Disease Surveillance Center
21 Aug 2003 — SARSの集団発生終息後の期間におけるアラート、情報確認、 公衆衛生上の管理 ... 2003年3月以降、新しいコロナウイルス(SARS-CoV)が原因であることを含め、この疾患 ...
bnonews.com › index.php › 2021/02
Russia reports first human cases of H5N8 bird flu - BNO News
15 minutes ago — “The first cases of human infection with [avian influenza A(H5N8)] have been laboratory confirmed.” The virus was found ...
theprint.in › Science
Why 50% Indians will be happy to have some Neanderthal DNA. Hint: It has to do with Covid - ThePrint
45 分前 — ... 50 per cent of Indians carry this DNA sequence. The frequency of this gene variant is 49.5 per cent in Gujaratis, and 48 per cent in the Telugu population, he added.
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