How far is India from the peak of Covid 19? Did India flatten the wrong curve?

Here are the top #3 questions to answer.

Today India suppressed the Italy in terms of total number of Covid 19 infections. After two months of prolonged lock down did India really able to achieve its goal to flatten the curve? There are lots of connected unanswered questions regarding the pandemic in India. In this article I will try to explain some of this question backed by extensive data and analytics in terms of where we are standing and what the future looks like from the ogle of data.

 #1 . Is India's Covid 19 curve really flattening?

Lets begin !

The below graphs shows daily new cases of covid 19 in Germany , UK , USA and Italy.    

These are some of the countries who had in forced the complete/partial lock-down a brief period after India executed the lockdown , in-spite of the late lockdown in UK ,USA, Italy and Germany , the graph shows they have almost flattened the infection curve and for some of the countries its even going down from the average number of infection . Again these are the countries how had suffered most number of deaths since the starting of March. Only the USA counted more than 1 lakhs deaths , Italy has recorded 33k deaths due to covid 19 .

Now Lets have a look towards the daily new infection number in India

The graph clearly explains that the number of new infection is raising rapidly . Till now India has reported 240000 infections but only 6642 deaths so far . Was the lockdown efficient enough for such a vast country like India ?

The interesting thing is when we fit a Polynomial trend line with forecast value of next 30 days it gives a R^2 value of .958 which significantly explains the variability of independent value in the ” Y “ and gives a line which no way looks flattening in the future instead the infection rate keeps going up in the forecast .

By looking at the trend we can conclude the first questing that the flattening of curve strategy by India was not the successful one . If things goes in the same way , it is expected to reach 12k+ by the next week  . Even a 5 day moving average gives a approximately value of 5.5k new cases .

There are several reasons behind India’s raising infection rate in-spite of early lock down .

A)     Lowest number of testing conducted in India during the lock-down , the unavailability of testing kits across the states .

B)      The migrant labor workers was not sent home before the hard lock down as now they are moving to their natives this might be the reason that still the infections is spreading . A prior notice to all migrant worker could have helped to reach home before the complete lock-down .(Maharashtra is already having the highest number of infection )

C)      Lack of planning : We got the first Red zone , Orange zone and Green zone model almost one month after the lockdown while clustering model is not new , we have already used it during the spread of Cholera , if the same plan was executed before there would have been a chance of lower containment zones .

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Lets take Mumbai as an example to study the curve :

India’s financial hub has emerged as the epicenter of the nation’s corona virus outbreak as the city alone accounts for more than a fifth of the total case count. The sprawling city of Mumbai, among the world’s most crowded, is racing against time to flatten the curve of Covid-19 infections that have crossed 1 lakh in the world’s second-most populous country.

Data says one in every five person is covid infected in Mumbai .

Source ----- by BloombergQuint

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A same curve like India can be seen in Brazil right now . They are also having a sharp raise in new cases . So can we say India and Brazil are the next epi center of Covid 19 ?

Though India has significantly increased the testing rate but it is still 2.6 for per thousand people while the total cases per million stands at 126 along with 3.6 deaths per million (Considering the current data ) . From the above discussion its not hard to say that India is still far away from flattening the curve .

#2. Now the most mysterious question arise why does India has the lowest death rate among all the other countries ? 

I have looked into several facts to find the answer for this question , lets first look at the graph

Above graph showing new deaths per day in India

If we compare the same graph with other countries , having same number of infection rate , India no way looks closer to the number of deaths has been recorded so far in other countries . So the next question follows if there is any co-relation between the Ciovid infection and number of Deaths in India . Though this looks an easy interpretation but lets see it in the graph . A scatter plot of New case vs daily deaths shows a positive co-relation of 0.967731.

This scatter plot shows there is a co-relation between deaths and new cases with a liner regression line but still the total fatality number not even near !

The next question that comes to your mind does India hiding the actual data regarding the covid 19 deaths ?

According to ICMR - India is far from the Covid-19 peak, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) expert Dr Nivedita Gupta said during a joint briefing of the ICMR and Ministry of Health briefing on Covid-19 on Tuesday

These are some of the questions only the government or future can tell . It will not be a surprise if we see only 500 deaths even when we hit the daily new cases at 20k . Still we can find some subjective answers for the same...

A)      The young population of India (Median= 28.2 ) could be a reason that India having the lowest death rate as it has been observed the mortality rate is higher in older age group >=50 .

B)      BCG vaccine : This vaccine is widely used for protection against TB but it also gives protective measure to respiratory system . However please note : BCG is not generally recommended for use in the United States because of the low risk of infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The US has never used mass immunization of BCG, relying instead on the detection and treatment of latent tuberculosis

C)      Food Habit : Indian people usages spices like Turmeric , Cumin , Ginger etc in every day's food with considerable quantity of each which could be a reason of natural immunity booster for the indians to fight against the Covid Infection . The high recovery rate in India also might be for the same reason . “The recovery rate is now 48.07%,”

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So is India an outlier when it comes to novel corona virus fatalities?

"To be totally frank, I don't know and the world doesn't know the answer," Indian-American physician and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee told journalist Barkha Dutt recently. "It's a mystery, I'd say and part of the mystery is we are not doing enough testing. If we tested more then we'd know the answer."

"Since most deaths occur at home - and will be for the foreseeable future - in India, other systems are needed," Dr Jha told me.

Around 80% of deaths in India still happen at home, including deaths from infections like malaria and pneumonia. Maternal deaths, and deaths from sudden coronary attacks and accidents are more often reported from hospitals. "A lot of people get some medical attention over time, return and die at home in India," says Dr Jha.

Clearly, counting hospital deaths alone is not going to be sufficient enough to get an accurate number of Covid-19 fatalities.

Counting deaths has always been an inexact science in India.

Some 10 million people die in India every year. The Million Death Study found that some deaths were underestimated (India had only 100,000 premature HIV deaths in 2005, about a quarter of the total estimated by WHO) and some were overestimated (five times as many malaria deaths as the WHO had estimated.) Also, according to the government's own admission, only 22% of deaths in India are medically certified. --------------- BBC news

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To conclude the answer , India will see comparatively lowest number of deaths in the coming days . This is only the good news for the people of India .God's Grace! (Considering there is no speculation in the data )

#3 Did Inda flatten the wrong curve ?

Recently on an interview Rajiv Bajaj, MD at Bajaj Auto, said in a social media interaction with Rahul Gandhi that “the national lockdown has managed to flatten the GDP curve and not the Covid-19 curve, a large country like India cannot save itself out of trouble. It has to sail itself out of trouble."

As the world is going through the turbulence created by covid 19, India can’t keep itself separate from the rest of the world . As of now no country is able to get an efficient control over the spread of infection. Today almost 6.42 million people got infected by Covid 19 and approximately 383k deaths in the world . As vaccine is yet to be found, lockdowns remain the only way to slow its spread. However, the lockdowns are also pushing major economies to the brink….

A typical vaccine for the world is one the way which might take another year to get it into the hands of common people. There also might be a chance that we may never find a vaccine for Covid 19 . The question is how far we can go and sustain the traditional way of life without an effective vaccine.

The world economy is shrinking on the verge of collapse. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised its global GDP growth estimate from 3.3% just 3 months ago to a contraction of 3%, something not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Almost 1/3 of the world workforce to get impacted by the slowdown of the economy, unemployment rate to hit highest since 2008.

Indian GDP grew by a slower pace of 3.1% in the fourth quarter of 2019-20, showed data released by the Central Statistics Office on Friday. This, as the corona virus further weakened consumer demand and private investment in the March quarter. The median forecast from a Reuters poll of economists had put annual economic growth at 2.1% in the March quarter. During the quarter under review, only one week of nationwide lockdown was observed.

Growth was 4.2% in the fiscal year through March 2020, the Statistics Ministry said, as compared to 6.1% in FY19. "April core sector data came in at -38.1%, the worst print ever.

Most recently after the downgrading of sovereign rating of India by Moody’s along with other rating agency made the situation more difficult for government as the cost of borrowing will go up resulting more burden to the government with respect to the current fiscal deficit . The financial stimulus package announced by India which is mostly indirect benefit in nature may not impact the government borrowing much but the current debt of the government which is almost 70 % of the gdp is raising concern for the government . Also an interesting time to watch how long RBI can sustain the reduced repo rate without impacting the reserve in long term .

The RBI has forecast inflation to collapse to 2.4% within the fourth quarter of FY21 amid a pronounced slump in demand that would create room for more rate cuts. But the Covid-19 pandemic seems as a ‘specter’ that could upset all calculations, the central bank said in its Monetary Policy Report for the fiscal.

Source- Target Economics

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“In these conditions, forecasts are hazardous as they are subject to large revisions with every incoming data on the pandemic,” it said in the policy note.

Collecting Data Difficult’

after peaking at 7.6% in January, inflation eased to 6.6% in February. The RBI, which skipped providing estimates during the March 27 policy meeting, has forecast Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation at 2.4% in Q4 of FY21, halving from 4.8% in Q1. The MPC has been mandated to keep CPI at 4%, with a two percentage point band on either side .---- ET

Corona virus crisis: India's fiscal deficit may be over 5% in FY21, says CEA Subramanian

 As corona virus pandemic refuses to slow down its deadly march across the world, Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian has said the corona virus-induced lockdown will stretch India's fiscal deficit for the year to 5.2-5.3 per cent of GDP compared to the Centre's Budget estimate of 3.5 per cent. The 1.7-1.8 percentage point rise in fiscal deficit is likely if underlying assumption of 10 per cent nominal GDP growth.-------------------- Business Today

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The fiscal loop :

·        A higher fiscal deficit is not just the government’s headache. It has an impact on all our financial lives .  The government is trying to cut costs, and this is already having an impact on salaries of its employees. Meanwhile, lower returns from bank FDs are a result of higher govt borrowings

This huge jump in the fiscal deficit was because the government ended up with gross tax revenue of ?20.1 trillion against the revised estimate of ?21.63 trillion, a gap of more than ?1.5 trillion. Also, any government cannot cut expenditure beyond a point.

As the governments borrow more to finance their fiscal deficits and accumulate more debt, interest rates tend to go up. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is trying to drive down interest rates and in the process returns from bank fixed deposits (FDs) have gone down. ------------------ Source -Live Mint

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India’s Demonetization followed by a new GST plan widely effected the countries growth in the past. Now the complete lock down for two months was just the add-on to India’s depression. Time to watch how India comes out of such situation in future. A continuous slowdown , missing fiscal target , lowest growth in core sector , Raising unemployment and a decrease rate in the inflation indicates India might have flatten the wrong curve .

Please note: The discussion above was written out of my own understanding of the situation ; I do not endorse any political view. All sources have been mentioned in hyperlinked text .