Why India has few Positive COVID-19 Cases than rest of the world?


Why India is very less effected by COVID-19 than the USA, Italy or Germany despite being a Highly Populated Country?


As of April 4th, 2020 India has reported 3,671 confirmed cases which are less compared to 315,714 confirmed cases and 8,187 deaths of the United States of America. Even though the population of India is almost quadruple times more than the USA, we are a very less affected country by COVID-19.

Factors leading:

  1. Early Preventive measures by the Government 
  2.  Low testing rates
  3.  Self Medication and lack of self-assessment 
  4. BCG Vaccination 
  5. Heat and Humidity 
  6. Social stigma 

1. Early Preventive measures by the Government 

-Before total cases were nearly 100, the Indian government took action by 
  • Asking to Self-report by immigrants, asking there travel history and their symptoms if any. Checking their temperatures and asking them to self-isolate for 14 days 
  • Issuing warnings of COVID-19 and pre-recorded government PSA (Called tune), educating common symptoms of COVID-19 like cough and fever in many regional languages to the public.
  • Banning Foreign Flights both passenger and commercial as soon as possible.
  • Cutting off Domestics travel by shutting down domestic flights and railways.
  • Imposing a 21-day Lockdown throughout the Nation.
  • Contact tracing and reporting regular updates from quarantined personals.

2. Low testing rates 
  • In India, as of 4th April, 79,950 samples have been tested by ICMR. It has to be noted that only 3671 have found to be positive among them i.e. 4.5%. But to be precise each person is getting tested more than 3 times according to the protocol. Even the patient's recovered need to be tested 2 times negative for them to get discharged. Which ultimately makes 

Total Confirmed: 3,671
Total Recovered: 286 

Total tests :1.  3671 x 3 = 11,013
286 x 2 = 572 

Total - 11,585 tests i.e. Sampling Rate = 15% 

It can be even more as deceased persons are also tested to confirm the cause of death while autopsy.

So, more testing kits should be made available in the population immediately to identify as many positive cases as possible with at least required 1% of the population i.e. 1.3 crore testing kits.

In comparison with other countries:

A: The no. of tests per 1 million population conducted till March 31st, 2020.
  1. Germany: 11,127
  2. Italy:8,573
  3. USA:3,164
  4. India: 30
 
Data source: ourworldindata.org

B: The total number of tests conducted per day on April 1st, 2020
  1. USA: 1,00,989
  2. Italy: 34,455
  3. India: 5,163

Note: India is the highest populated country among the comparison with over 1.33 Billion people.

- Not only India’s testing rate is very poor but also they are not considering the no. of asymptomatic carriers. The availability of the testing facility is not convenient for a common man. Recently the government has allowed private labs to test for COVID-19 at a capped price of Rs.4,500/- which is reasonably high considering the average monthly income of an Indian is merely Rs.6,660/-.
How will the Indian Families end up paying for the tests when they are living without getting salaries, struggling to keep up to their family needs during the lockdown as most of them used to get daily wages.

3. Self Medication and lack of self-assessment 

Indian are well known to follow their own home remedies of cold, cough and fever. Even most of them prefer to use over the counter medications recklessly without consulting a doctor or even without self-assessing their symptoms. India is a country we're respiratory infections like Common Cold to Tuberculosis are exists, so they don’t take it seriously when a person is suffering from respiratory symptoms and end up not reporting.
Also reported than Hydrochloroquinie is bought and self-administered by the public even health officials warn not to as a preventive medication.


4. BCG Vaccination 

Indian National Immunisation schedule contains Bacille Calmette-Guerin(BCG) Vaccine for the newborns is in place for many generations. which is lacking in countries like the USA, Italy, Netherlands, Germany where a very high number of cases are reported. Research by US Scientists at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) documents of BCG Vaccine administration showing immunity.
Monica Gulati, senior Dean, Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Lovely Professional University (LPU), Punjab also stated “Every small thing gives us a ray of hope. It will be premature to say anything now. But the silver lining is that the BCG vaccine has proved quite effective against the SARS infection also"

5. Heat and Humidity

 India is a tropical country with high temperatures and humidity. Currently, we are facing summers with today’s day time temperature at Delhi is 32oC, with reports of temperature rising up to 47oC.
Corona Virus is more prevalent above the Tropic of Cancer where reportedly the average temperate is less than 25oC in countries like South Korea, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, USA and Canada.

6. Social stigma 

  • India is the only country where people have thrown tantrums, spit and abused Health workers even though the Health Officials are committed to saving patients even at the lack of proper basic protective equipment like N95 Masks.
  • People are scared in India of getting infected by COVID-19, even there was a report of a person committing suicide by jumping from the 7th floor of Safdarjung hospital building in Delhi dies.
  • Not only patients but also Doctors are facing social stigma in the society as “Many doctors have been asked to vacate their rented homes by their landlords as they believe that doctors staying at their houses may make them more susceptible to COVID-19” a junior doctor at Hyderabad’s MGM Hospital reported to the press.
  • India is comprised of more poor and middle classes families who are scared to report any of there symptoms pertaining to COVID-19 as they fear social discrimination in the society and future conflicts which might arise if they get tested positive.

I Suggest to the General public of India that Life is more important than wealth and respect. We now need to be united together as citizens of the country-India to fight against the virus. Like our prime minister, Mr. Narendra Modi and other government officials are trying their best to curb this issue to the maximum at the event of implementing a 21day lockdown, even at the cost of not notifying the state government or public to take necessary steps beforehand. In the event of recognizing that our Health Care system is 140th ranked worldwide and noting that developed countries like Italy (Ranked 2nd worldwide) are facing a very high rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths even with the presence of state of the art medical facilities, we need to be very careful.
             I request all of you to take precautionary measures beforehand and stay at home safely to fight this issue.


 “Prevention is better than cure”

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