Covid-19: What you need to know today
Is Mumbai India’s New York? And is Maharashtra, India’s New York State?
The questions are in the context of the coronavirus disease. New York State accounts for 356,278 (as of Tuesday morning) of the total of around 1.51 million cases in the country – around 23.5%. And 28,302 deaths – 31.3% of the 90,293 deaths in the country.
New York City accounted for 198,114 of these cases and 20,298 deaths – 13.1% and 22.4% of the cases and the deaths in the country, respectively.
On Tuesday morning, Maharashtra accounted for 35,058 of India’s 100,311 cases and 1,249 of 3,081 deaths – 35% and 41% respectively.
Of these, Mumbai’s share was 21,335 and 757 – 21.2% and 25% of the cases and deaths in the country respectively. That one in four deaths in India from Covid-19 has taken place in its commercial capital and one of its two most important cities is staggering.
The comparative figures for Delhi were 10,054 and 160 – 10% and 5.2% of the India total, respectively.
The number of cases in Mumbai and Delhi have accelerated in the past two weeks – but so have cases across India.
In the two weeks between May 4 and May 18, the number of cases in Mumbai rose by 12,025 (56% of the total cases in Mumbai were recorded since May 4). In the same period, the number of cases in Delhi increased by 5,156 (or 51.28% of the total cases in Delhi were recorded since May 4). At the national level, India has recorded 54% of its cases in the past two weeks.
To answer the original question, Mumbai’s trajectory of cases has followed a more even curve than New York City’s, which was steep. But Mumbai is also more densely populated than NY, and smaller.
As for why, there are no easy answers. Higher testing alone doesn’t explain this, although it may be one reason why both Delhi and Mumbai are showing as many cases as they are.
Delhi tests around 7,354 people for every million of its population (according to data available till Monday night). Mumbai was testing 7,040 per million, according to data available till May 14. That number is likely to have increased.
Density may be a factor, as could the presence of large slums. Mumbai has Asia’s largest, Dharavi, and it has seen 1,327 cases and 56 deaths thus far.
For some time, it looked as if Mumbai was going the New York City way even in terms of the death rate – it was higher than 7% for some weeks in April. It is now 3.5% (number of deaths as a percentage of number of cases). The corresponding proportion for NYC is 10.2%.
That’s a huge difference – but it is also in keeping with the trend that the fatality rate of Covid-19 infections in India has remained lower than that in other countries.
It’s probably the reason why India shouldn’t worry too much about the spike in cases. Its focus should be on minimising deaths. Tamil Nadu is a good role model (so far). With 11,760 cases till Tuesday, it has seen only 81 deaths, a fatality rate of 0.69%. Almost 70% of the cases in the southern state have been added in the past two weeks.
As India opens up even as it sees a spike in cases, comes the good news that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine seeing great results in a limited study of eight people.
The vaccine will now have to go through a much larger human trial. Interestingly, if approved, it will become the world’s first mRNA vaccine. In contrast to normal vaccines that use inactive forms of the virus or bacteria causing the disease, mRNA vaccines use messenger RNA from the virus to instruct the body’s own cells to produce the viral protein. The body’s immune system registers and reacts to them, producing what is called an immune reaction. Moderna’s vaccine against Covid-19 did just this.
There’s even better news – there’s work happening on similar vaccines in India.