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I've lived in India for 6 months.. I love India and Indian people, it's an incredible country to live in. What I am watching is upsetting. I can do nothing to help.

But the statistics on the pandemic are just not really being recorded. It sounds like they aren't really needed but they are incredibly important. It's a huge country with 1.4 billion people. Without knowing where help is needed how can you maximise any help you are going to provide, randomly pick a hostpital? Without knowing why people are dying, how can you try to stop them from dying? Why is this nonsensical? It's fundamental knowledge to tackling the pandemic in India.

More information here Dr John on India and other things

You dont really need the detailed clinal studies by age and other risk factors to deal with the acute stage of a massive wave of hospital admissions.

A lot of the UK data we have now took a long time to come through, and some of the clinical picture, risk factors etc emerged with data gathered over the course of the first wave, it wasnt available in advance of our most difficult first wave period.

The data required in order to know where to direct help is much easier to ascertain, because it will be pretty obvious on the ground which hospitals are overwhelmed, where oxygen is needed etc. Thats quite different stuff to gathering the sort of data required to tell us if a particular outbreak, variant etc is showing a different age pattern.

When it comes to things like pandemic death statistics, India is not a country I would expect to have captured that picture very fully at any stage. But when it comes to some other aspects of public health, countries with 'old fashioned' health resoures were in some ways actually better placed to deal with certain aspects of infectious disease than certain 'modern' healthcare systems and approaches to public health. For example some of the UK fuckups at coping with this disease were due to a total lack of 'boots on the ground' approach to public health resources, most obviously when it came to contact tracing but really in some other areas too. However any gains on that front where the 'less developed' systems already had boots on the ground as part of their norm, dont really help when the wave has been allowed to grow very large. Systems of all levels of sophistication cant hope to cope in those circumstances, much of the detail goes out of the window and it becomes more like emergency fire fighting.
 
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The most recent WHO report unsurprisingly didnt really have many answers.

In India, heterogeneity in B.1.617 geographic distribution is observed across regions, with co-circulation of other VOCs (including VOC 202012/01 and 501Y.V2) and other variants (e.g., B.1.618), which collectively may be playing a role in the current resurgence in this country. Indeed, studies have highlighted that the spread of the second wave has been much faster than the first. Preliminary modelling by WHO based on sequences submitted to GISAID suggest that B.1.617 has a higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India, suggesting potential increased transmissibility, with other co-circulating variants also demonstrating increased transmissibility. Other drivers may include challenges around the implementation and adherence to public health and social measures (PHSM), and social gatherings (including mass gatherings during cultural and religious celebrations, and elections). Further investigation is needed to understand the relative contribution of these factors.

It remains unclear how generalizable laboratory-based studies of limited sample sizes, as well as studies of other variants with similar key mutations, are to the wider circulating B.1.617 variants. Further robust studies into the phenotypic impacts of these variants, including impacts on epidemiological characteristics (transmissibility, severity, reinfection risk, etc.) and impact on countermeasures, are urgently needed.

From Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 27 April 2021
 
This, full of rage and humanity, is really good, on whats happening in India.

Its not a statistics piece but mentions in passing (& without attribution) that if you just count funerals, in villages as well as the cities, it might be best to think of the death rate at around 30 times official figures.
 
I came to post that, blimey it was a hard read, so depressing. :(

The number of Covid-protocol funerals from graveyards and crematoriums in small towns and cities suggest a death toll up to 30 times higher than the official count. Doctors who are working outside the metropolitan areas can tell you how it is.

If Delhi is breaking down, what should we imagine is happening in villages in Bihar, in Uttar Pradesh, in Madhya Pradesh? Where tens of millions of workers from the cities, carrying the virus with them, are fleeing home to their families, traumatised by their memory of Modi’s national lockdown in 2020. It was the strictest lockdown in the world, announced with only four hours’ notice. It left migrant workers stranded in cities with no work, no money to pay their rent, no food and no transport. Many had to walk hundreds of miles to their homes in far-flung villages. Hundreds died on the way.

Early this morning, on 28 April, news came that our friend Prabhubhai has died. Before he died, he showed classic Covid symptoms. But his death will not register in the official Covid count because he died at home without a test or treatment.
 
Italy claims to have contained the handful of cases of the Indian variant but not sure I believe that nor will it matter if the Indian variant is at large in other European countries while the borders are open

 
If anyone feels like doing a small something, there's loads of crisis appeals for India going on but these people here, I can vouch for them 100%, have been & met their local partner organisations in India, seen who they are and what they do, they are excellent, and courageous, and they focus on the people at the sharpest end.

This is the local org they work with (you can't send money directly to any indian charity as the recent goverment crackdown on NGOs has made that impossible )
 
This, full of rage and humanity, is really good, on whats happening in India.

Its not a statistics piece but mentions in passing (& without attribution) that if you just count funerals, in villages as well as the cities, it might be best to think of the death rate at around 30 times official figures.

:( :( :(

I didn't have time to read that (must-read) 'long read' today, but it's going to be my no.1 priority read tomorrow.

It's going to be tough, but it looks like the contents are going to be essential to know :(
 
Sorry, not been keeping up, are current vaccines effective against the Indian variant?

Early studies seem to suggest they will be effective enough to prevent severe symptoms, and there's this statement too...

BioNTech’s chief executive has said he is confident the Covid-19 vaccine his company pioneered with Pfizer will work against a new variant circulating in India, where health officials are recording hundreds of thousands of new coronavirus cases a day.

BioNTech says it has investigated more than 30 variants of the virus, including the latest mutation from India. That new variant, known as B.1.617, “has mutations that we have already studied and against which our vaccine is effective”, said Sahin, adding that it left him confident the vaccine would still work.

 
Bit C&P from the beeb today ...

[Posted at 7:297:29
Kenya's anti-vaccine doctor dies of Covid-19
0f8b98ea-2f78-4daf-b8b8-6a80e1928e29.jpg

Rhoda Odhiambo
BBC health reporter, Nairobi]

A prominent Kenyan doctor and conspiracy theorist who became a campaigner against coronavirus vaccines has died from the disease.

Dr Stephen Karanja said it was unnecessary to vaccinate Kenyans against Covid-19.

Instead, he argued for steam inhalation and a cocktail of drugs, including hydroxychloroquine and zinc.

He also spread conspiracy theories, involving Bill Gates and population control.

Dr Karanja died on Thursday in the high dependency unit of a private hospital in the capital, Nairobi.

More than 800,000 Kenyans have now been vaccinated, with no severe side effects being reported.

Before his death, Dr Karanja was the chair of the Catholic Doctors Association, which described him “as a true medical soldier”.

Although I'm sort of sorry for his family (assuming he had one) I'm not sorry that someone in such an influential position has ceased to be able to add the existing pool of disinformation they were spreading.
 
With all the shock & horror of the situation in India, South America has dropped down the news agenda, but blimey are things grim there too. :(

It’s the league nowhere wants to top: where Covid-19 is hitting hardest.

But while the horrendous crisis in India has been rightly leading the news this week, many countries across South America are in a similarly catastrophic position.

Last week, the Americas region - including the US as well as South America - accounted for 41 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO), or 36,530 of 88,272 deaths. For context, the region represents roughly 13 per cent of the world’s population.

The numbers for this week may change the picture, but they are unlikely to improve it; and some analyses go even further. The New York Times suggested that South America alone - representing about 8 per cent of the world's population - accounted for 35 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths last week.

Brazil accounts for a big share of those tragic numbers, and its disaster has been well documented: 14 million cases, more than 400,000 deaths, and a president who is famed for dismissing the pandemic as “the sniffles”.

Brazil has over taken the UK on deaths per million, and are averaging 2,523 a day, adjusted for population, that's equal to just over 800 a day in the UK, and their fuckwit president dismisses it as just “the sniffles”. :mad:

 
State of emergency ended at midnight last night and the state of calamity starts. today. Restaurants and bars open inside a maximum of ten at a table, shopping malls open till &pm , supermarkets etc open until 9pm , baptisms and weddings at 50% of venue capacityand borders begin to open aside from India. Masks and social distancing still apply . There are still some regional differences but these are based on council areas rather than counties. Yesterday no deaths reported this is only the third time this has happened since the pandemic began. Vaccines for the over 65s began a week ago.
 
I give it 4 to 6 weeks before Portugal, Italy and others are reimposing the restrictions lifted in recent days. Its so obviously premature. And they're partly doing it because US/UK are - but US and UK have vaccinated over half their populations already
I'm not sure about Portugal being influenced by either the US or the UK, to be honest. The speculation was that tourism wouldn't be viable until late summer so there is little industry or public expectation about a turn around on that. The news this morning was full of dire warning about opening up the Spanish border even though it's been open for good and work during confinement.
The Portuguese situation is a lot healthier than Italy's . The projection for Portugal is that the national rate should reach under 60 per thousand population within 2 /3weeks and 'herd immunity by summer. Vaccine rollout is getting faster as production capacity is increase. The main debate isn't that the deconfinement programme is too fast it's that the government didn't confine quick enough over the December period. The govt has said that it will impose local restrictions where necessary. There are some localities that haven't moved into the deconfinement phase ie Portimao and where I am we stayed in level 2 for three weeks longer than the other areas. If it's managed properly on a local basis then there is room for cautious optimism. Obviously where we will be in the autumn is anyones guess.
 
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