There are over 5.37 million cases of COVID-19 in the world today with over 342,727 deaths. In India there has been 131423 ( covid19india.org) cases till now with 3868 deaths. Here is a summary of the situation in India.
All India Level
There are over 40775 new cases in the week of 17th May to 23rd May with 35 states and Union territories impacted all across the country. The weekly growth rate remained same as compared to last week. There has been a 45% increase in the total number of cases in the week. During this week there has been a 35% increase in the total number of deaths from 2871 in the week ending on 16th May to 3868 in the week ending on 23rd May.
SEGMENT LEVEL ANALYSIS
IPD divides the country into different risk segments based on the total number of cases in the state and the weekly growth rate. Here is how the segments are defined.
The distribution of states across the segments are as under:
Karnataka and Odisha has moved into extremely severe risk segment. Haryana, Jharkhand, Assam, Uttarakhand and Chhattishgarh are among the states which moved into higher risk segments. Punjab has seen less than 10% growth in the number of cases and has moved to a lower risk group in this week. 5 states and UTs show no new cases this week. Maharashtra, Bihar , Assam, Karnataka, Odisha , Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand among the big states and Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Puducherry among the small states and UTs have a weekly growth rate of more than 50% this week.
The extremely severe risk group show a 59% increase in the number of cases. The severe and very high risk groups also have a higher growth rate as compared to the national growth rate. There has been no new cases in 5 of the 7 low risk group states and UTs. The extremely severe group and the very severe group combined has lion’s share in the new cases this week with over 97% of the new cases coming from this group followed by the very severe risk group. The share of new cases across segments falls as the risk of the segment falls.
In terms of total number of positive cases per 100 tests conducted, it is seen that the percentage is significantly higher in the extremely severe risk group as compared to the others. This reflects the need to conduct more tests in the higher risk groups as more positive cases are coming from these groups. It is to be noted here that the percentage of positive cases per 100 test has seen a increase in the all India level in the week ending on 23rd May as compared to the previous week. This increase has been mainly concentrated in the extremely severe risk group and the very severe risk group.
Moreover in terms of recovery rate, the extremely severe risk group has a lower recovery rate compared to the other risk groups. India overall has a better recovery rate than the world recovery rate of 87%. Even the extremely severe risk group also has a higher recovery rate than the world average.
STATE LEVEL ANALYSIS
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are the top three states and UTs in terms of the spread of COVID-19 cases. The three states together account for over 58% of all the cases in the country. Maharashtra alone contributes to 33% of all the cases in the country. Delhi and Rajasthan are the other two states in the top 5. Five states and UTs show no new cases this week. This week there has been over 1800 cases which were not assigned to any state by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Maharashtra, Delhi and Telengana has the highest number of positive cases per 100 tests conducted while there are 16 states with less than 1% positive cases out of the total number of tests conducted in those states. There are 5 states which have higher percentage of positive cases per 100 states than the national average of 4.1%. Maharashtra has seen a significant increase in percentage of positive cases per 100 test this week as compared to the previous week. This has lead to the rise in national rate.
Kerala, Tamil Nadu an Odisha has been the leading states in terms of recovery rate. West Bangal has the lowest recovery rate among all the states and UTs. Maharashtra and Gujarat, which are among the top states in terms of the total number of cases, has low recovery rates and are the bottom three states in terms of recovery rate. One silver lining is that all these three states have shown some improvement in recovery rate as compared to last week. West Bengal is the only state in India where the recovery rate is less than the world average. All other states have recovery rate more than 87%, which is the world average.
CITY LEVEL ANALYSIS
Based on the spread of COVID 19 and also the weekly growth rate, IPD groups the top 20 cities in terms of COVID 19 cased into 4 risk groups. The highest risk group has 5 cities of which three are from Maharashtra. Mumbai and Delhi both fall in this risk group. This risk group contributes to 48% of all the COVID cases in the country. A special task group needs to be created for each pf these 5 cities falling in the highest risk group.
Almost 62% of all the cases in the country comes from 10 cities in the country. Another 8.5% comes from the next 10 cities. So only 20 cities put together contribute to over 70% of all the cases in the country. Mumbai, the financial capital of the country alone accounts for over 21% of the total number of cases in the country. In the top 10 cities there are three cities from Maharashtra ( Mumbai, Pune and Thane), two cities from Gujarat (Ahmadabad and Surat) and one city each from Rajasthan ( Jaipur) Madhya Pradesh (Indore), West Bengal (Kolkata) and Tamil Nadu (Chennai) respectively. The national capital region of Delhi also falls in the top 10 cities.
Indian Political Debate 