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House and the Congress to agree on a second stimulus package. The fiscal package of nearly $3 trillion had offered companies help paying wages and gave millions of unemployed Americans a weekly $600 supplement, which expires on Saturday.
The bleak numbers have added to fears about the longterm economic impact of the pandemic even as lockdowns have eased and many businesses reopened.
Economists say the downturn was concentrated in the months of April and May when lockdowns were most severe. Even with many restrictive measures phased out, outlook suggests that a long and uncertain climb back to pre-pandemic levels could take until 2022 or longer if countries don’t see renewed spread of the deadly virus.
Rosie Colthorpe, European economist at Oxford Economics, said the current third quarter was likely to see high growth rates, “but not nearly large enough to make up for the damage”.
“Beyond this initial bounce, the recovery is set to be gradual and uneven,” with pre-virus output regained only by mid-2022, she said, adding that “recent flare-ups of the virus in several European countries risk derailing this recovery.”
Countries across Europe that were hit hard by the pandemic in the spring, including Spain and France, are seeing rising infection rates after lifting restrictions and fuelling fears of a secand ond wave of infections.
Similarly, the US -- which unlike Europe has not yet been able to get its contagion numbers firmly down – is the worst-affected nation, recording over 4.6 million cases till Friday as the virus continues to find new strongholds in states in the world’s third-most populated country. Kerala are among states that have recorded the biggest improvement in weekly testing numbers. Arunachal’s numbers were up 622% while UP’S rose by 257%.
On the other hand, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka recorded some of the slowest growth in daily testing.
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) data suggests the increase has largely been due to antigen tests, which were rolled out on June 14 and now account for 10% of all tests conducted. In the past one month, antigen tests have increased to account for about 25% of the tests performed per day across India.
These tests are the only other option besides the real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RRT-PCR) test, which is considered the gold standard to diagnose Covid-19.
An antigen is a protein (in this case present on the virus) that induces an immune response in the body in the form of production of antibodies against a disease, and detecting its presence through an antigen-based test determines a present infection.
This sort of test has been seen as key to the turnaround in Delhi, where the positivity rate of tests -- the proportion of people who are found positive for the disease from among those tested – dropped from 37% a month ago to about 6%. Changes in positivity rate can indicate whether a city or a state is able to identify all of its cases.
But in case of antigen tests, ICMR guidelines say, all symptomatic negative cases have to be confirmed through an RRT-PCR test to rule out a false negative.
Virologists and microbiologists say mass testing is the key to identify and isolate those infected so that the disease doesn’t spread.
“The way ahead is to test as many people as possible, to be able to track and isolate those people who are infected so that the disease spread is contained. If you isolate them in time, the spread in the community will be curtailed,” said Jacob John, former head, virology department, Christian Medical College, Vellore.
Dr Amita Jain, head, microbiology department, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, said: “Since positive results are confirmed positives, it will work in picking up cases, even if it is not able to pick up all cases. In areas where the viral load is very high it should work well, and that’s what we want -- that cases are tracked early. RT-PCR is a better test but can’t be deployed on mass scale as it’s not only cumbersome and expensive but also takes much longer. It’s ok to conduct confirmatory negative tests through RT-PCR.”
Delhi was the first state to start antigen based Covid-19 testing last month, and other states that have deployed antigen testing in a significant way include Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and some north-eastern states.
Antigen testing, however, has not picked up in the private sector. Officials in several hospitals said they do not use it as a first choice because of the need for an RRT-PCR to confirm a negative result. “Might as well do an RRTPCR test to diagnose a case rather than do a rapid antigen test and confirm it with using an RRT-PCR. It will also mean double the cost for a patient when we can know their Covid status with a single test,” said an administrative official in a prominent private hospital.