Need of the hour: Early detection and tackling the infection's epicenter.

By Kiron Kasbekar, Managing Director, Informachine Pvt. Ltd.

We are facing a serious crisis.

In an idle moment, I looked at the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resources Center survey numbers, and copied and analyzed the numbers. A bit of a pain because while they have given infections for China and the US in aggregates, the deaths are shown by city or state/province. So I had to copy and paste and add them up.

Anyway, then I analyzed the numbers for 12 countries, and found this. I ordered the deaths as a percentage of confirmed infections in ascending order in column D and others as a percentage of the Indian figure for column D, and got what you see in the table below.

Country	Confirmed cases	Deaths	Death to Infection ration	Others as % of India
A	B	C	D	E
Germany	47373	285	0.60	0.25
South Korea	9332	139	1.49	0.63
USA	86012	1301	1.51	0.64
India	843	20	2.37	1.00
Brazil	2988	77	2.58	1.09
China	81897	3296	4.02	1.70
UK	11816	580	4.91	2.07
France	29581	1698	5.74	2.42
Netherlands	7469	435	5.82	2.45
Iran	32332	2378	7.35	3.10
Spain	64059	4858	7.58	3.20
Italy	80589	8215	10.19	4.30

The low Korean numbers are explained by what South Korea did immediately after news of the infections in China broke. South Korea conducted more diagnostic tests faster than any other country – 10,000 to 15,000 per day – and that helped it with early detection of patients and tackling the infection's epicenter.

Germany has done even better. German laboratories have been conducting about 160,000 coronavirus tests every week — more than some European countries have carried out in total since the crisis started. Such mass testing has resulted in a lower fatality rate because it allows authorities to detect cases of Covid-19 even in patients who suffer few or no symptoms, and who have a much better chance of survival.

The key has been in detecting coronavirus cases early so that treatment and prevention of contagion can be better focused and strengthened.

Now look at the US and India. Very low numbers reported. But considering the dilly-dallying that happened in both these countries in tackling the pandemic, those low numbers probably conceal a time bomb of infections lurking in untested populations, and ready to strike and infect millions more.

India just does not have the capacity to treat so many patients, and the government has wasted the last two months dilly-dallying.

Now we face the prospects of severe shortages of essential commodities if quick, decisive, sensible action is not taken. This is a time when the government must create a united front of all major parties, get advice from economists and medical and technical experts to urgently stitch together a plan of action and begin implementation.

Responsible economists have talked of the need to invest many lakh crore rupees to support and subsidize food and housing as well as medical care. We are running against time.

Share with others if you agree — but let us not panic. While we need to recognize facts as they are and not live in an imaginary world, we need to be practical and avoid panic at all costs.