The simple answer, at a time when good news is a rare commodity, is yes, but fall is more than meets the eye.
First, the facts. In the past week, the nationwide new case curve has seen a rare drop, with the seven-day average of cases per day declining for the five consecutive days through Monday, something that has never happened since the outbreak began coronavirus in the country in March.
The numbers may suggest that cases in the country have started to stabilize. They have?
Have cases all over India stalled?
On September 10, 99,181 new cases of Covid-19 were reported across the country, according to HT’s Covid-19 panel. Until that day, the seven-day average of daily cases (commonly known as the daily case trajectory or case curve) had been increasing consecutively since August 16.
The August 16 drop in trajectory was a single-day aberration, largely explained by the decline in testing and case reporting due to the August 15 weekend. Before August 16, the trajectory had been increasing for 81 days in a row. All signs until a week ago pointed to the number of daily cases crossing the 100,000 mark in the coming days. But this brand was never broken.
The seven-day case average peaked (so far) on Sept. 16, at 93,617, and fell for five consecutive days after that. By Monday night, this number had dropped to 90,472. This is an unprecedented drop for a country, which has experienced an almost constant increase in the trajectory of cases throughout the course of the pandemic.
But the tests follow a similar drop in trajectory
India set a new record for daily tests for Covid-19 on Saturday when 1.2 million samples were analyzed, according to the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s lead body for biomedical research. However, despite Saturday’s record, the daily tests have seen a long stalemate since the first week of September. For the week ending Monday, an average of 1,001,929 tests were performed every day. This number was 1,098,274 for the week ending September 13 (the highest it has ever reached).
In fact, the seven-day average line for daily tests (or the daily test trajectory) has largely followed the same path as daily cases, a one-week plateau around September 10, and a drop in the last five or six days.
Meanwhile, the positivity rate is increasing, again
The seven-day average positivity rate, the proportion of tests that test positive for Covid-19, has started to rise again. In the past week, 9.2% of all tests conducted nationwide came back positive, the highest number this number has reached in 40 days, or since Aug. 12. Over the past month, the average positivity rate increased 1.5 percentage points – from 7.7% for the week ending August 21 to 9.2% for the week ending September 21.
A rising positivity rate means that more people are testing positive for Sars-Cov2, and therefore if this number increases, it indicates a higher prevalence of the virus within the community. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the positivity rate for a region that has a comprehensive testing program should be equal to or less than 5% for at least two weeks before the outbreak can be considered under control. in the region.
So what does this mean?
While cases appear to have stalled, two crucial metrics – daily testing and positivity rate – don’t paint a good picture. India is conducting fewer cases today (on average) than a week ago, and a higher proportion of those tests are testing positive. This would mean that there is a good chance that the case trajectory will rise again, if the levels of evidence do.
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