Expert: the number of cases in India is approaching half a billion

Fears that the incidence in India could be 30 times higher than the official 17.9 million that has been announced since the start of the pandemic are now being voiced by experts. If this ratio is confirmed, the number of cases could reach half a billion people.

Health care and scientists have long warned that official reports of coronavirus outbreaks and related deaths are significantly lower than actual reports for a number of reasons: lack of infrastructure, human error, and low levels of diagnostic tests.

Of course, some things have changed since the first wave, such as the relative increase in the number of tests. But the actual scale of the second wave that is hitting India is probably much worse than official statistics say.

India continues to break world records for the daily increase in the number of cases of the new type of coronavirus (COVID-19). At the same time, the local version of the coronavirus, as stated in the WHO, can pose a threat even to those who have been ill or vaccinated.

According to the country’s Ministry of Health, over the past 24 hours, India has registered 362,902 cases of coronavirus infection. The total number of cases of infection has reached 17,998,623.

In India, since April 22, anti-records of the daily increase in the incidence of coronavirus have been recorded. Before India, the record was held by the United States, where on January 8, the daily increase in those infected with coronavirus reached 307,581.

# India is breaking records for the number of cases of coronavirus for the fifth day – over 360 thousand new cases per day. Everyday…

Posted by Russian Athens – Russian Athens on Monday, April 26, 2021

Over the past day, 3,285 people have died in India due to the coronavirus. The total number of deaths in this country since the beginning of the pandemic has reached 201,165. In total, 14,807,704 people have been ill with coronavirus in India, with 2,979,768 patients being treated.

The battle is still ongoing. According to special forecasting models used by scientists at the University of Washington, the daily death toll will remain optimal until mid-May. The number of deaths is projected to exceed 13,000 per day, four times the current daily forecast.

The National Positivity Index is around 15%, and in some cities (like New Delhi) it rises to 30%, Sumya Swaminathan, a scientist at the World Health Organization, said on Monday. “This means that there are many people who have been infected with the virus and have not been identified due to the capabilities of the tests. Only later will we be able to find out how many people were actually infected, ”he added.

Insufficient funding for the public health sector means that even under normal circumstances, only 86% of deaths are recorded by official government agencies, of which only 22% are recorded for any official reason, says pharmacist Hemant Shevade.

Most people in India die at home or elsewhere, not in a hospital, which means there is usually no doctor to explain death. A problem that was exacerbated during the second wave of the pandemic, since there are no empty beds at all in hospitals for new hospitalizations. Coronavirus patients with nowhere to go mostly die at home, in stationary ambulances, in waiting rooms or outside crowded clinics.

To date, India has recorded 201,165 deaths from the coronavirus. However, according to Dr. Hemant Shevade, the number of deaths can be underestimated at a ratio of two to five, which means that the actual number could be as high as 1 million.

The number of mass graves, cremations and storage of bodies has raised doubts in government reports of coronavirus deaths in various parts of India.

Meanwhile, the country is actively continuing vaccination against the coronavirus. According to the Ministry of Health, 145,271,186 doses of the vaccine have already been used in the country.

According to the resource Ourworldindata.org, India has the third highest vaccination rate in the world after the United States and China. The country’s population is about 1.4 billion people.

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