Covid-19 not to wind down until at least October: Experts

The burning question on the minds of most people is when the Covid-19 epidemic will end. Not until October at the least, said a quartet of experts gathered to discuss the matter.

In the ‘DH Sparks’ webinar series titled ‘Living with the Virus: How and when will the pandemic end?’ organised by DH on Friday, four eminent experts in their respective fields --- Dr Giridhar Babu (Epidemiologist and State Task Force Member), Dr Sashikumar Ganesan (Chair of IISc’s Department of Computational and Data Sciences), Dr C N Manjunath (Cardiologist and State Nodal officer for testing) and Dr Vishal Rao (Associate Dean, Centre of Academic Research, HCG Cancer centre) - conducted a lively discussion on what could be expected in the months to come.

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One thing the panellists made clearly in the discussion was that they were not soothsayers who could make accurate predictions about where and how the epidemic would end.

Dr Ganesan, whose mathematical model which takes into consideration key parameters such social distancing and quarantine breaches to make its prediction, said the latest data shows that the pandemic peaking in late October under the best-case scenario. However, under the worst-case scenario, it peaks only at the end of December, he said.

Dr Vishal Rao specified that vaccine developments could herald the beginning of the end, explaining that 177 worldwide trials were going on. “While 90% are doomed to failure, we are optimistically estimating that by March that some of the hurdles to a vaccine will be crossed - provided the virus cooperates with us,” he said.

There is substantial room for optimism despite the gloom of the current situation, added Dr Giridhar Babu. “An absolute number of cases does not mean anything in a country with a vast population, such as India. Instead of looking at the case fatality rate, we should be looking at the deaths per million. In India, the number of deaths per million is about 27. In contrast, if we look at all the other countries with more than 1,00,000 cases, their deaths per million are 157,” he said.

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When asked why the state was not testing more, Dr Manjunath explained that work was in progress to build up its testing infrastructure. “We have gone from eight labs in the beginning to over 100 labs currently. We are scaling up. The goal is to conduct 50,000 tests per day. As we test more and more, linearly we are going to get more and more cases,” he said.

Dr Babu added, “If you ask me, we should ideally increase our testing by up to 10 times.”