Coronavirus: Look towards death toll, not cases, suggest experts

Epidemiologists told Indian Express the number of deaths will give a clearer picture of where the pandemic is headed and judge whether states were successful or not.

Since the outbreak, India has seen a steady rise in daily death numbers. For example, on May 11, 87 died. A week later on May 18, the death toll rose to 157.

The numbers keep swelling.

Epidemiologist Dr. Jayaprakash Muliyil, who is the former principal of CMC Vellore, said it's important to lower the death toll by ramping up medical infrastructure. The focus must be on getting more oxygen beds and not testing, tracing, and isolating patients.

"Many diseases have sub-clinical infections, we do not call them 'cases' when most people recover spontaneously without treatment," he explained.

Dr. Muliyil said community transmission has already begun in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai (despite ICMR declaring on Thursday that this stage is still afar).

So, testing more people won't get us anywhere as many results will come to be positive.

"By the time the whole thing is over, 60 crore will be infected. Counting that doesn't help us much, it only scares people," he added.

At 2.86%, India's death rate is better. The infection fatality rate, which is the percentage of deaths among those exposed to the virus, not merely those who tested positive after RT-PCR examination, is also less.

India's deaths per million (DPM) is 6.70, better than US' 351 and UK's 608. It only lags behind Singapore and Australia which have DPM of 4.

Another epidemiologist asked why attention was only being given to tracing and testing in Mumbai and Delhi. There could be people who may have contracted the infection and recovered unknowingly. Testing them is, hence, a futile exercise.

Those who have a breathing problem must be spoken to and efforts must be made to ensure their condition doesn't deteriorate, he added.

And Dr. Giridhara R Babu, who is the chief of Lifecourse Epidemiology at the Indian Institute of Public Health in Bengaluru said the lockdown period was meant to restrict the transmission and prepare the health infrastructure.

The states which did so are handling the situation better, he added.

"I can think of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka using the lockdown to prepare well," he said.

On a related note, over two days in the next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with chief ministers, his sixth virtual meeting since Lockdown 1.0 started, to discuss opening up of economy among other things.

The meeting will happen on June 16 and 17. CMs of worst-affected states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Delhi were given a slot on the second day.