Why are coronavirus cases falling in India?
There have been several theories proposed to unravel this mysterious fall in the numbers.
Good practices
Awareness about practices such as washing hands and wearing masks in public places has been diligently spread across the country.
From a very early stage of the outbreak, the government mandated wearing of masks in public places. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi sported one whenever he appeared in public. The government imposed fines for not wearing masks. Media platforms were used to spread awareness and free masks were distributed.
According to a telephonic survey conducted by The National Council of Applied Economic Research in the national capital Delhi, 95% of the respondents said they wear masks while going out.
However, while major cities followed the mask mandate diligently, smaller towns and villages, where much of the country’s population resides, have not taken a shine to the idea.
The climate
There is another theory which suggests that the hot and humid climate of the country proved to be a bad host for coronavirus, which requires low temperatures to thrive.
The NPR report quoted a review of hundreds of scientific articles, which said that “warm and wet climate seem to reduce the spread of Covid-19. There are other studies which suggested that droplets of the virus may stay afloat longer in air that’s cold and dry.
“When the air is humid and warm, [the droplets] fall to the ground more quickly, and it makes transmission harder,” Elizabeth McGraw, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, was quoted by the NPR report.
However, there are other reports which point to the contrary. According to them, high levels of pollution in Indian cities is conducive for the virus to persist. The pollution, experts argue, also weakens a person’s immune system, thereby increasing their chances of getting infected from the virus.
Effective contact tracing
According to a survey conducted in the state of Punjab, it was found that 76% of the patients did not infect a single other person. Overall, only 10% of the cases were responsible for 80% of the infections in the state, the survey found.
Pre-existing immunity
Indians are exposed to several diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, typhoid, hepatitis, cholera. Some experts speculate that exposure to these diseases in the past may have increased the immunity of the general population.
A preliminary report suggested that low- and lower-middle-income countries with less access to health care facilities, hygiene and sanitation have lower numbers of Covid-19 deaths per capita.
Another study by scientists at Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College said that Covid-19 deaths per capita are lower in countries where people are exposed to a diverse range of microbes and bacteria.
Young demography
Only 6% of the country’s population is older than 65; more than half of the population is below 25 years of age.
The virus is likely to have a less-lethal impact on the young population.
Another study published in journal Science found that the mortality rate in the population above 65 years decreases in India. The study suggested that people who manage to live beyond 65 years are either wealthier or more educated and thus have better access to healthcare facilities.
Prevalence of antibodies
There are mixed views on whether herd immunity — when a significant proportion of a population is immune to infectious disease — may be present in much of India.
Several serological surveys have shown that a large population in several cities has already been exposed to the coronavirus, without developing symptoms. The presence of antibodies has broken the chain of the virus by developing herd immunity.
The antibodies within a human body can diminish with time. As long as these antibodies are present, they would continue to stop the virus from spreading.
However, experts say that herd immunity only sets in when at least 60% to 80% of the population has antibodies.
A study published in The Lancet last week noted that in the hard-hit city of Manaus, Brazil, there had been a resurgence of Covid-19 — despite a high prevalence of people with antibodies.
Some of the reasons offered include waning immunity from prior infections, and a new, stronger variant.
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Source : Times of India