The annual flu season has started in Delhi, northwestern India, and the northern plains. Several in the HT newsroom fell ill with the flu last week, not the coronavirus disease (Covid-19; they tested negative), but the seasonal flu that makes its presence felt at this time of year. Some of its symptoms are similar to those of the coronavirus disease, adding to the confusion and fear, but it’s just the flu.
Temperatures in the north and northwest of the country are expected to begin to drop significantly in late September, and while no one in India seems to be particularly concerned about that at the moment, health administrators in much of the northern hemisphere are wondering which one. is the beginning of colder weather will mean for the Sars-CoV2 virus (which is the son of winter anyway). Will it mean a further increase in cases, which are already increasing in some parts of Europe as a direct result of countries opening up?
Not long ago, in spring, many of us (including this writer) expected warm weather to be unfavorable for the spread of the virus. We were wrong. It even prospered in the Indian summer. Now, based on what is known about the Spanish flu of 1918-19, researchers and health administrators are concerned about the fall and winter: the second wave of the Spanish flu, which began in the fall of 1918, was very more virulent and fatal than the first (or the third).
India and the rest of the world are likely to see a dip (well, India really doesn’t have the season, but you know what I mean) and winter with more Covid-19 cases, but fewer deaths. Various drugs have been approved for emergency use by drug regulators, including in India, and this author’s opinion is that the use of antivirals such as remdesivir, steroids, monoclonal antibodies, and interferons to control infections severe enough to require hospitalization can end up saving lives. India’s health administrators cannot be blamed at least in this regard. Even so, the increase in cases, which will mean a consequent increase in hospitalizations, will again stretch the health systems.
India’s daily figures (the country ended Sunday with 5,485,390 new cases) have seen something weird, a drop, in recent days, with its seven-day average falling between Wednesday and Saturday (I remember this happened only one time before in months). The final seven-day averages for each of the six days between Monday and Saturday were: 93,180, 93,334, 93,617, 93,278, 92,589, and 92,308. The only thing that can explain this is a drop in testing. India tested 1.16 million people on September 10, a day when it recorded 99,181 cases. She tasted less than that in the next eight days. Only on Saturday, September 19, more tests were done: 1.2 million people, which is also a record in terms of number of tests. As I have noted above, there is no direct daily correspondence between evidence and cases, although anyone looking at the figures around the world assumes there is (and it is easier from an analytical perspective to do so; all of HT’s analyzes. copywriting assumes this as well, otherwise it will be difficult to calculate key metrics such as positivity rates). The number of 99,181 cases on September 10 came after 1.13 million tests on September 9 and 1.15 million tests on September 8.
The drop in tests after September 10 was not marked, the difference exceeded 100,000 in just three days (of which it exceeded 200,000 in one day), but it still seems to have been enough to prevent the number of new cases in India exceeds six. -digits. That reprieve may be temporary. If India continues testing with the same intensity as it did on September 19, it will soon cross the 100,000 mark for new daily cases.
.
