There are over 2.3 million people affected by Covid-19 as of now worldwide. There are over 1.5 lakh deaths worldwide as of now. Let us look at the status of India as of the week of 12th to 18th April. The overall growth rate of the total number of cases in India was 86% in the week ending on 18th April as against 129% in the last week.
There are around 7270 new cases reported in the country in the week from 12th to 18th April with 34 states and union territories affected across the country. Based on the total number of cases and the growth rate of the number of cases, the country is divided into several risk segments.
There have been some movement across segment of the states as compared to last week. Some states became more riskier as compared to previous week. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat moved from the very severe segment to the extremely severe segment while Uttar Pradesh moved to the very severe segment from the severe segment. Karnataka on the other hand moved to the severe risk segment from the very high risk segment. There were some improvements as well. Punjab and Haryana moved to the very high segment from the severe segment. States like Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattishgarh and Jharkhand moved to the medium risk segment from the high risk segment. Here is the distribution of states across the segments.
Data Source: covid19india.org
Below is the summary of the segments. The avergar number of cases per state show a steady decline across the segments. The growth rate of the extremely severe segment is higher than the national growth rate while the growth rate of all other segments are lower than the national average,
The extremely severe segment has lion’s share in the total number of new cases in the week ending 18th April. There are no states in the high risk segment and hence no new cases also in that segment, The share on new cases show a steady decline across the segments.
There has been a lot of discussion on the number of tests conducted across states. It is known that Kerala, Rajasthan and Maharashtra are top states in terms of number of tests per million persons. An important point is to decide which areas to focus on in terms of testing. For this the ratio of number of positive cases to the total number of tests become a important measure.
The all India number stood at 4.2% positive cases per 100 tests. It is seen that number of positive cases per 100 tests is higher in the riskier segments and show a steady decline across the segments. This data clearly suggests that areas with more cases have higher chance of getting a new case and hence more tests needs to be conducted in those areas. It is a good sign that the number of positive cases per 100 tests show a steady decline for the lower risk segment suggesting lesser chance of new cases in these segments.
Another important indicator is recovery rate among all the completed cases, i.e. the sum of all recovered and death cases. The active cases are not considered for this purpose as the treatment of these cases are still on and the final outcome is awaited. India has a decent 82% recovery rate among all the completed cases. However the recovery rate is lower in the extremely severe segment as compared to all other segment. With the exception of severe segments the recovery rate has shown a steady rise with the decline in riskiness of the segment.
All the above findings suggest specific focus in required for the extremely severe segment as they have the lion’s share of the new cases in the week and also has a higher number of positive cases per 100 tests conducted. They also has a lower recovery rate. So the utmost focus needs to be in this segment.
Here is a state wise total number of positive cases till now.
Indian Political Debate 