COVID-19: India overtakes Spain, but don’t be scared!

On Sunday, India became the fifth worst-hit Covid-19 country in the world, overtaking Spain.  This has happened at a time when India is opening up fast.  Barring a few restrictions, the country stands reopened from Monday.

While several media reports and memes doing the rounds on the Internet are painting a scary picture, some experts feel that the situation is not as grim as is being made out to be by some.  Scientist and JNU professor Anand Ranganathan says, “STOP scaring people. In the absence of Antibody testing, the ONLY metric that is worth considering is Deaths per million. If Spain’s rate is 575 per million (Ranked 4), India’s is 4 per million (Ranked 120).”

He adds, Ahmedabad’s deaths per million is 120, Mumbai’s is 78, Delhi’s is 29, Kolkata’s is 22, Chennai’s is 14, Hyderabad’s is 2, and Bengaluru’s is 1.

Some States are doing far worse than the national average, while others are doing much better.  For example, Delhi’s deaths per million is 8 times that of the all-India average, says Prof. Shamika Ravi.  Apart from Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat have worse rates than the all-India average.