Vital clues for India from two milestones
nNEWDELHI:THE Covid-19 pandemic reached two important milestones on Thursday. Italy’s death toll of 3,405 overtook that of China. On the same day, China announced that for the first time since the start of the outbreak, no new local infections had been recorded in the country.
These two milestones could offer India clues to the trajectory of the virus, how to flatten its curve so as not to overwhelm its healthcare resources and, most importantly, to prepare for the infections to come on a war footing.
A study by the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford & Nuffield College, UK, suggested that the demographic structure of Italy has made it vulnerable to the coronavirus onslaught.
Italy has the second highest proportion of old people, with 23.3% of its population aged over 65, compared to 12% in China. Italy is also a country characterised by extensive intergenerational contacts that are supported by a high degree of residential proximity between adult children and their parents, says the study - a situation very similar to India’s.
Most young Italians also prefer to live close to their families and commute to work in neighbouring cities.
“According to data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics, this extensive commuting affects over half of the population in the northern regions,” the study said.
The study also makes mortality projections for the US, South Africa and Japan, which have different demographics. The US has a more evenly distributed population, Japan has more elderly but South Africa has more young people and hence likely to be less affected.
The study underlines that the timing of social distancing interventions matter. For example, as of March 13, the most affected Italian province was Bergamo (2,368 cases), which overtook Lodi (1,133 cases), where the outbreak started and the containment measures were introduced first. No interventions were introduced in Bergamo until March 8, which led to the number of cases peaking.
India is about to record its 200th case and is beginning to consider lockdowns in some parts of the country.
“It’s very difficult to single out any one cause for the high number of deaths in Italy and to predict how things will be in India. There could be multiple reasons: underlying health conditions making them more susceptible to infections, immune responses are very different for populations with diabetes, hypertension and kidney disease. We have to see what happens in the US in the next two weeks. In India we have to be prepared,” said Dr Amit Singh, an associate professor at the Centre for Infectious Disease Research, Indian Institute of Science.