NEW DELHI: The first ever analysis of COVID 19 outbreak patterns in India so far has revealed that the biggest wave of cases—that eventually led to significant local transmissions—came from Dubai, highlighting concerns that the government might have delayed by several weeks in aggressively quarantining all international passengers.
India now has 724 confirmed cases and the trend analysis is based on nearly 720 patients who have tested positive for novel coronavirus.
Of these nearly 100 came from Dubai—from where a large number of migrant Indians come home. It is also a major transit point for Indian or NRI travellers from Europe and the US headed to the country.
“A large number of positive cases traveled from Dubai, followed by the UK, Italy, Saudi Arabia and the US—it underlines the fact that we should have quarantined more aggressively in early March in order to limit the extent of the outbreak,” said Dr Anupam Singh, a public health researcher with the Santosh Institute of Medical Sciences in Ghaziabad, UP who has done the coding.
“However, the trend clearly emphasizes the need to identify those who have traveled from abroad in the recent past and quickly check and test them and their contacts in a targeted manner,” he added.
Dr Singh’s analysis is based on the data put together by Covid19India.org, a crowdsourcing platform–which in turn is relying on the numbers and details by the central and state governments and other public information on the outbreak.
The analysis also throws up several other interesting points. For example, as it has become increasingly apparent that COVID-19 discriminates by sex, with men more likely to test positive and more likely to die from the disease, India too is no exception.
Nearly 65 per cent of all who have tested positive in India are men, as opposed to 35 per cent women and this proportion—compared to 60: 40 internationally—is higher in India as the cases are now piling up.
In India too, most people who have died so far were in their 60s and the mean age of those deceased versus the mean age of those recovered is 65 and 45 years.
The infection fatality rate, says the analysis, is around 2 per cent but Dr Singh cautions that there could be some “overestimate/underestimate bound as not all hospitalizations are accounted for.”
Another significant finding is the infection rate among healthcare workers which stands at 3.6 per cent as nearly 26 of them have tested positive so far.
“A significantly higher number of healthcare workers is a major cause of concern and therefore ensuring adequate personal protective equipment, masks etc for them is a must,” Dr Singh noted.
Key findings from the analysis
· Highest number of imported cases of COVID 19 are from Dubai
· Among those infected, 65 per cent are men as compared to 35 per cent women
· Among total cases, 3.6 per cent are healthcare workers
· On an average an infected person infects 2.7 other people
· There are quite a few “super-spreaders in India too” and the highest number of infections caused by one person is 16
· The mean age of those deceased is 65 years
· The mean age of those recovered is 45 years
· The mortality rate among those above 60 who get infected is 6.25 %