India Coronavirus Dispatch: Strategies to contain the spread in future

Experts on India's future coronavirus graph, why India's planned air bubbles are not exactly that, how Covid has changed consumer behaviour-a roundup news on how India is dealing with the pandemic

Mapping Covid-19 across 8 big cities, fake N95 masks flooding the markets, and how Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer behaviour — a roundup of articles in Indian news publications on how India is dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Experts on India’s future coronavirus graph: As India crosses the 1 million mark in Coronavirus cases, its graph continues to rise, with little sign of the elusive flattening of the curve. What strategies should India adopt today, to contain the spread across the country in the future? Read this conversation with Dr Shahid Jameel, virologist and CEO, Welcome Trust, DBT India Alliance and Dr Mathew Varghese, public health expert who led India's efforts against Polio, currently works as an orthopaedic surgeon at St Stephen's Hospital, Delhi. 

MANAGING COVID-19

Bengaluru vs Mumbai vs Delhi: Mapping Covid-19 across 8 big cities: While individual statistics do serve a purpose, they often don't reveal the larger story. This piece compares the Covid-19 situation across eight major cities along various key parameters. The cities are - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. The statistics for each parameter have been mapped between late April and 15 July 2020. 

31.6 lakh people in quarantine across India, highest number in U.P: A whopping 31.6 lakh people are currently in quarantine across the country as authorities made concerted efforts to check the spread of the novel coronavirus which has infected over 10 lakh people so far, officials said on Friday. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of people in quarantine among States, followed by Maharashtra, they said. Read more here. 

Why India’s planned air bubbles are not exactly that: Despite the relaxations being given by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to foreign airlines of France and the US to fly passengers of Indian and non-Indian nationalities on both legs of their India flights, restrictions put in place by the foreign jurisdictions, as well as India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, mean that the situation does not change for most travellers unless these norms are eased up. Read more here. 

How Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer behaviour: A recent report on the impact of Covid-19 on consumer sentiment and behaviour by Mckinsey & Co, published on July 8, after conducting weekly, bi-weekly and monthly surveys in 12 countries, said that 91 per cent Indians changed their shopping behaviour due to the crisis. Many urban consumers, increasingly working from home and reluctant to deal with crowded public places, are moving online for their shopping needs. Read more here. 

Why ventilators, once the need of the hour, are now a last resort among doctors treating Covid: Several doctors and pulmonologists agree that once patients are put on a ventilator, high mortality is 'common' and 'unsurprising'. This isn’t to say that all those on a ventilator will die, but the chances are higher if the patient has an underlying illness or other health complications. Ventilators have thus become the last resort, and are reserved for only two to three per cent of patients, who reach the critical stage of the Covid-19 illness. Read more here. 

OPINION 

Predictions, pandemics and public health: If we combine the remarkable capacity for decisions and actions on the basis of anticipatory knowledges, and the disposition to be generous and share the knowledges we have — we should have been able to pre-empt or, fairly quickly contain the pandemic. The striking genomic similarity of the novel coronavirus with SARS is now well known and many who had studied SARS had anticipated the inevitability of more contagious pandemics than SARS in the offing and had sounded the alarm for the whole world to know and act upon the knowledge. Yet no one did. Why? Read more here. 

UNDERSTANDING COVID-19

The Indian market is flooded with fake N95 masks: India crossed 1 million Covid-19 cases, people will need to continue using masks. There is complete confusion right now about what an N95 mask is and its specifications. The most important factor is greater awareness among users. Covid-19 has triggered a surge in demand for N95 respirators. Subsequently, many manufacturers with little experience in making these products have stepped in – but few of them are producing effective masks. Read more here. 

Eating out, shopping, jogging in the park: What is safe, what isn’t: As people look to resume outdoor activities, there is growing concern over the risks they face of novel coronavirus infection. But not all outdoor activities carry the same level of risk, and it is important that people are judicious in what they do once they venture out of their homes. This is crucial to keeping the epidemic in check as lockdown restrictions are progressively relaxed. Read more here. 
 

Bharat Biotech, Zydus Cadila start human trials for Covid-19 vaccine: Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila kicked off human trials for their Covid-19 vaccine candidates this week, inoculating the first set of participants in what will be a closely watched race for an indigenous vaccine against the contagious virus. Read more here. 

This is how you can read epidemiological data to understand Covid trends better: Over the last few months, epidemiological data to understand and describe coronavirus transmission and Covid-19 disease spread has seen a huge increase. From recovery and death rates to talk about community transmission and mathematical projections, there has been a steady bombardment of complex information. Here are some epidemiologists and disease modeling experts making sense of commonly used concepts, and explaining misconceptions we need to be wary of. Read more here.