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‘Horrible’ weeks ahead as India’s virus catastrophe worsens
COVID-19 infections and deaths are mounting with alarming speed in India with no end in sight to the crisis and a top expert warning that the coming weeks in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people will be “horrible.”
India’s official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million Tuesday, nearly doubling in the past three months, while deaths officially have passed 220,000. Staggering as those numbers are, the true figures are believed to be far higher, the undercount an apparent reflection of the troubles in the health care system.
The country has witnessed scenes of people dying outside overwhelmed hospitals and funeral pyres lighting up the night sky.
Infections have surged in India since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants of the virus as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for Hindu religious festivals and political rallies before state elections.
Read Also: Impact of devastating Indian virus surge spreads to politics
India’s top health official, Rajesh Bhushan, refused to speculate last month as to why authorities weren’t better prepared. But the cost is clear: People are dying because of shortages of bottled oxygen and hospital beds or because they couldn’t get a COVID-19 test.
India’s official average of newly confirmed cases per day has soared from over 65,000 on April 1 to about 370,000, and deaths per day have officially gone from over 300 to more than 3,000.
On Tuesday, the health ministry reported 357,229 new cases in the past 24 hours and 3,449 deaths from COVID-19.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health in the U.S., said he is concerned that Indian policymakers he has been in contact with believe things will improve in the next few days.
“I’ve been ... trying to say to them, `If everything goes very well, things will be horrible for the next several weeks. And it may be much longer,’” he said.
Jha said the focus needs to be on “classic” public health measures: targeted shutdowns, more testing, universal mask-wearing and avoiding large gatherings.
“That is what’s going to break the back of this surge,” he said.
The death and infection figures are considered unreliable because testing is patchy and reporting incomplete. For example, government guidelines ask Indian states to include suspected COVID-19 cases when recording deaths from the outbreak, but many do not do so.
Read Also: 24 die in southern India hospital due to oxygen shortage
The U.S., with one-fourth the population of India, has recorded more than 2 1/2 times as many deaths, at around 580,000.
Municipal records for this past Sunday show 1,680 dead in the Indian capital were treated according to the procedures for handing the bodies of those infected with COVID-19. But in the same 24-hour period, only 407 deaths were added to the official toll from New Delhi.
The New Delhi High Court announced it will start punishing government officials if supplies of oxygen allocated to hospitals are not delivered. “Enough is enough,” it said.
The deaths reflect the fragility of India’s health system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has countered criticism by pointing out that the underfunding of health care has been chronic.
But this was all the more reason for authorities to use the several months when cases in India declined to shore up the system, said Dr. Vineeta Bal of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
“Only a patchwork improvement would’ve been possible,” she said. But the country “didn’t even do that.”
Now authorities are scrambling to make up for lost time. Beds are being added in hospitals, more tests are being done, oxygen is being sent from one corner of the country to another, and manufacturing of the few drugs effective against COVID-19 is being scaled up.
The challenges are steep in states where elections were held and unmasked crowds probably worsened the spread of the virus. The average number of daily infections in West Bengal state has increased by a multiple of 32 to over 17,000 since the balloting began.
“It’s a terrifying crisis,” said Dr. Punyabrata Goon, convener of the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum.
Read Also: Indian leader’s party takes electoral hit amid virus surge MAY 03, 2021
Goon added that the state also needs to hasten immunizations. But the world’s largest maker of vaccines is short of shots — the result of lagging manufacturing and raw material shortages.
Experts are also worried the prices being charged for shots will make it harder for the poor to get vaccinated. On Monday, opposition parties urged the government make vaccinations free to all Indians.
India is vaccinating about 2.1 million people daily, or around 0.15% of its population.
“This is not going to end very soon,” said Dr. Ravi Gupta, a virus expert at the University of Cambridge in England. “And really ... the soul of the country is at risk in a way.”
Impact of devastating Indian virus surge spreads to politics
As a catastrophic surge of the coronavirus sweeps through India, the leaders of 13 opposition parties urged the government to launch a free vaccination drive and ensure an uninterrupted flow of oxygen to all hospitals.
Several hospital authorities sought court intervention over the weekend to provide oxygen supplies in New Delhi, where a lockdown has been extended by a week in an attempt to contain the wave of infections.
Also read: Bucking anti-incumbency, Mamata scores a hat-trick in Bengal
The New Delhi High Court said it would start punishing government officials if supplies of oxygen allocated to hospitals are not delivered.
“Water has gone above the head. Enough is enough,” it said.
India reported 368,147 new coronavirus cases and 3,417 deaths on Monday — numbers that experts believe are vast undercounts because of a widespread lack of testing and incomplete reporting.
The health ministry says it has confirmed 19.9 million COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, behind only the U.S., which has counted more than 32.4 million. It says more than 218,000 people have died.
On Monday, 24 COVID-19 patients died at a government-run hospital in the southern state of Karnataka amid reports of an oxygen shortage. It was unclear how many died due to a lack of oxygen, but the chief minister ordered an investigation.
Also read: BJP Office set on fire in India’s West Bengal, party blames Trinamool
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been severely criticized over its handling of the surge, which has pushed India’s already fragile and underfunded health system to the brink. Massive election rallies organized by his Bharatiya Janata Party and other parties as well as a giant Hindu festival on the banks of the Ganges may have exacerbated the spread, experts said, adding that new variants could also be increasing cases.
Modi’s party on Sunday suffered a resounding election defeat in a key state, West Bengal, failing to dislodge its firebrand chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. It retained power in northeastern Assam state but lost in two southern states.
While the four states were already stiff election challenges for Modi’s party apart from the pandemic, analysts said the results weaken Modi’s position as surging infections cripple the already fragile health system.
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League, said Monday’s match between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders would be rescheduled after two players tested positive for the coronavirus. The two players have self-isolated and medical personnel were tracing their contacts.
Also read: 7th phase of local elections underway in India's West Bengal amid COVID-19 spike
Despite rising cases, the league has held matches every evening behind closed doors since it kicked off in April.
India opened its vaccination campaign to people ages 18-44 on Saturday, a mammoth task undermined by limited supplies. India is the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, but even the ongoing effort to inoculate people above 45 is stuttering. Since January, 10% of Indians have received one dose but only around 1.5% have received both required doses.
Currently, only those over 45 can receive free vaccines at government inoculation centers. Private hospitals charge for the shots,
24 die in southern India hospital due to oxygen shortage
The oxygen crisis seems to be spiralling out of control in India.
After 62 Covid patients died at three Delhi hospitals in the past 10 days due to oxygen shortage, 24 more people lost their lives at a government medical facility in the southern state of Karnataka in the small hours of Monday after it allegedly ran out of the life-saving gas.
The deaths occurred at the general hospital in Karnataka's Chamarajanagar district, some 180km from state capital Bengaluru. Officials said that several Covid patients on life support were among the deceased.
Karnataka Health Minister K Sudhakar termed the incident as "unfortunate", but refused to acknowledge that all the deaths were due to the shortage of oxygen.
"What happened in Chamarajanagar is an unfortunate incident. I have discussed this matter with the chief minister. I am heading to Mysuru, Mandya and Chamarajanagar. I will find out how the deaths took place. And all the issues they are facing," he told the local media.
India's main opposition Congress party's leader Rahul Gandhi was quick to slam the federal government for the deaths. "Died or Killed? My heartfelt condolences to their families. How much more suffering before the ‘system’ wakes up?" Gandhi tweeted.
Read Also: India launches effort to inoculate all adults against COVID
In fact, several hospitals in India, particularly Delhi, are currently facing an acute shortage of oxygen as the country witnesses a ferocious second wave of Covid. In the past 10 days, at least 62 patients have died at three leading Delhi hospitals due to an acute shortage of oxygen.
On May 1, some 12 people, including a Covid-positive doctor, lost their lives at Batra Hospital after it ran out of the life-saving gas.
"Supply came at 1.30pm (a second tanker reached at around 4pm). But we were out of oxygen for 1 hour and 20 mins. By the time supplies came, 12 people, including a doctor, were dead. Most of them were Covid patients on life support," the hospital had said in a statement.
On April 24, Jaipur Golden Hospital, a dedicated Covid medical facility in Delhi, announced the death of 25 Covid patients in 24 hours due to "low-supply oxygen" to critical patients on ventilator.
And a day before, another leading hospital in Delhi also said in a statement that 25 patients lost their lives in 24 hours due to an acute shortage of oxygen. "25 sickest patients have died in the last 24 hours. Oxygen will last another two hours. Major crisis likely. Lives of 60 sickest patients at risk, need urgent intervention," Sir Ganga Ram Hospital had said.
Read Also: India's COVID-19 tally crosses 19 mln with over 400000 daily cases
It may also be mentioned here that as many as 24 Covid patients on ventilator at a government hospital in the western state of Maharashtra died some 10 days ago after their oxygen supply ran out following leakage of the life-supporting gas from a tanker. The tanker was brought to Zakir Hussain Municipal Hospital in Nashik district to replenish the cylinders.
Russia lags behind others in its COVID-19 vaccination drive
While at the Park House shopping mall in northern Moscow, Vladimir Makarov saw it was offering the coronavirus vaccine to customers, so he asked how long it would take.
“It turned out it’s simple here — 10 minutes,” he said of his experience last month.
But Makarov, like many Muscovites, still decided to put off getting the Sputnik V shot.
Read Also: First batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine delivered to India
Russia boasted last year of being first in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine, but it now finds itself lagging in getting its population immunized. That has cast doubt on whether authorities will reach their ambitious goal of vaccinating more than 30 million of country’s 146 million people by mid-June and nearly 69 million by August.
The vaccine reluctance comes as shots are readily available in the capital to anyone 18 or older at more than 200 state and private clinics, shopping malls, food courts, hospitals — even a theater.
As of mid-April, over 1 million of Moscow’s 12.7 million residents, or about 8%, have received at least one shot, even though the campaign began in December.
That percentage is similar for Russia as a whole. Through April 27, only 12.1 million people have gotten at least one shot and only 7.7 million, or 5%, have been fully vaccinated. That puts Russia far behind the U.S., where 43% have gotten at least one shot, and the European Union with nearly 27%.
Data analyst Alexander Dragan, who tracks vaccinations across Russia, said last week the country was giving shots to 200,000-205,000 people a day. In order to hit the mid-June target, it needs to be nearly double that.
“We need to start vaccinating 370,000 people a day, like, beginning tomorrow,” Dragan told The Associated Press.
To boost demand, Moscow officials began offering coupons worth 1,000 rubles ($13) to those over 60 who get vaccinated — not a small sum for those receiving monthly pensions of about 20,000 rubles ($260).
Still, it hasn’t generated much enthusiasm. Some elderly Muscovites told AP it was difficult to register online for the coupons or find grocery stores that accepted them.
Other regions also are offering incentives. Authorities in Chukotka, across the Bering Strait from Alaska, promised seniors 2,000 rubles for getting vaccinated, while the neighboring Magadan region offered 1,000 rubles. A theater in St. Petersburg offered discounted tickets for those presenting a vaccination certificate.
Read Also: Bangladesh approves local production of Russian, Chinese Covid vaccines
Russia’s lagging vaccination rates hinge on several factors, including supply. Russian drug makers have been slow to ramp up mass production, and there were shortages in March in many regions.
So far, only 28 million two-dose sets of all three vaccines available in Russia have been produced, with Sputnik V accounting for most of them, and only 17.4 million have been released into circulation after undergoing quality control.
Waiting lists for the shot remain long in places. In the Sverdlovsk region, the fifth most-populous in Russia, 178,000 people were on a wait list by mid-April, regional Deputy Health Minister Yekaterina Yutyaeva told AP.
On April 28, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are enough vaccines available in Russia, adding that demand was the defining factor in the country’s vaccination rate.
Another factor in Russians’ reluctance over Sputnik V was the fact that it was rolled out even as large-scale testing to ensure its safety and efficacy was still ongoing. But a study published in February in the British medical journal The Lancet said the vaccine appeared safe and highly effective against COVID-19, according to a trial involving about 20,000 people in Russia.
A poll in February by Russia’s top independent pollster, the Levada Center, showed that only 30% of respondents were willing to get Sputnik V, one of three domestically produced vaccines available. The poll had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
Dragan, the data analyst, says one possible explanation for the reluctance is the narrative from authorities that they have tamed the outbreak, even if that assessment might be premature.
With most virus restrictions lifted and government officials praising the Kremlin’s pandemic response, few have motivation to get the shot, he said, citing an attitude of, “If the outbreak is over, why would I get vaccinated?”
Vasily Vlassov, a public health expert at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, echoed Dragan’s sentiment and also pointed to inconsistent signals from officials and media.
Read Also: Bangladesh approves emergency use of Russian Sputnik V vaccine
“Russians in 2020 were bombarded with contradictory messages — first about (the coronavirus) not being dangerous and being just a cold, then that it was a deadly infection,” he told AP. “Then they were banned from leaving their homes.”
Another narrative, he said, was that foreign vaccines were dangerous but Russian-produced ones were not. State TV reported adverse reactions linked to Western vaccines while celebrating Sputnik V’s international success.
A proper media campaign promoting vaccinations didn’t begin on state TV until late March, observers and news reports note. Videos on the Channel 1 national network featured celebrities and other public figures talking about their experience but didn’t show them getting injected. President Vladimir Putin said he received the shot about the same time, but not on camera.
“Fruitful ground for conspiracy theorists,” said Dragan, who also works in marketing.
Rumors about the alleged dangers of vaccines actually surged on social media in December, when Russia began administering the shots, and have continued steadily since then, said social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova.
The rumors combined with other factors — the pseudoscience on Russian TV, vaccine distribution problems and an uneven rollout of the promotional campaign — to hamper the immunization drive, Arkhipova told AP.
Vlassov, meanwhile, noted the outbreak in Russia is far from over, and there even are signs it is growing.
“Roughly the same number of people get infected every day in Russia now as last May, at the peak of the outbreak,” he said, adding that twice as many people are dying every day than a year ago.
Government statistics say infections have stayed at about 8,000-9,000 per day nationwide, with 300-400 deaths recorded daily. But new cases have been steadily increasing in Moscow in the past month, exceeding 3,000 last week for the first time since January.
Read Also: Russia orders troop pullback but keeps weapons near Ukraine
Infection rates are growing in seven regions, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said on April 23, without identifying them. She blamed “insufficient vaccination rates” in some places.
And yet, the abundance of vaccines in Moscow has attracted foreigners who can’t get the shot at home. A group of Germans got their first jab at their hotel last month.
Uwe Keim, 46-year-old software developer from Stuttgart, told AP he believes “there are more vaccines available here in Russia than is demanded by the people here.”
Indian leader’s party takes electoral hit amid virus surge
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi suffered a resounding defeat in a key state election on Sunday, indicating his Hindu nationalist party’s political strength may be slipping as the country struggles to contain an unprecedented surge in coronavirus cases.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was unable to dislodge West Bengal state’s firebrand chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, after a hard-fought campaign.
Read Also: India reports over 360,000 new COVID-19 cases, tally nears 20 million
On Sunday night, Modi took to Twitter to congratulate rival Banerjee’s win. “The Centre will continue to extend all possible support to the West Bengal Government to fulfill people’s aspirations and also to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic,” he wrote.
His party also failed to win in two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. But the BJP secured a second term in the northeastern state of Assam and an alliance with regional parties led it to victory in the union territory of Puducherry.
Even before the current virus surge, Modi’s party faced stiff challenges in these local legislative elections. Following the disappointing results, Modi stands weakened but faces no threats to staying on as prime minister until his term ends in 2024.
“The BJP started running out of steam as the pandemic spread,” political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said.
“The verdict in West Bengal state will definitely weaken Modi’s position,” he added, but cautioned that the results needed to be studied further to determine how much they were a referendum on the BJP’s handling of COVID-19.
In West Bengal, Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress picked up 213 seats out of 292, while the BJP secured 77, according to the Election Commission of India. Two went to other parties.
Supporters of the All India Trinamool Congress party — many without masks and ignoring social distancing guidelines — held victory celebrations and set off firecrackers in West Bengal after initial results were released.
Read Also: BJP Office set on fire in India’s West Bengal, party blames Trinamool
Health experts say the massive electoral rallies and marches held as voters cast their ballots in March and April are partly to blame for the subsequent spike in COVID-19 infections. Public anger for allowing the elections to go forward despite the risk has been directed at both Modi’s government and the Election Commission.
Last week, the High Court in Tamil Nadu state slammed the Election Commission for allowing crowded campaigns in the middle of the pandemic. India’s daily new virus cases began rising past 100,000 in late March, and above 300,000 daily new cases on April 21, collapsing India’s tattered health care system.
“Your institution is singularly responsible for the second wave of COVID-19. Your officers should be booked on murder charges probably,” the court said.
Polly Roy, a professor of virology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said last week that India’s extremely dense population and the government’s lax rules about election rallies and religious gatherings fueled the outbreak. Experts have also blamed new, more contagious virus variants.
Nationwide, death is so omnipresent that burial grounds are running out of space in many cities, and glowing funeral pyres blaze through the night. With the government unable to maintain a steady supply of oxygen to overwhelmed hospitals, desperate relatives plead for oxygen outside or weep in the street for loved ones who died waiting for treatment.
On Sunday, India recorded a slight drop in new infections with 392,488, down from a high of 401,993 in the previous 24 hours. It also reported 3,689 additional deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 215,542. Experts believe both figures are an undercount.
Modi’s party soared in Hindu-dominated regions in central and northern India since he was elected in 2014. The recent local elections were seen as crucial for the party to gain a foothold in three states that have sizeable minority Muslim populations. The Hindu nationalist BJP has for years been accused of stoking religious polarization and discriminating against minorities.
Read Also: Why India’s pandemic data is vastly undercounted
The prime minister also wants to project the BJP as a national party, replacing a dynastic Congress party that governed India for more than six decades after independence from British rule in 1947. The Congress party, led by Sonia Gandhi, did poorly in the recent elections, failing to capture power from the BJP in Assam or from Communist parties in Kerala.
India reports over 360,000 new COVID-19 cases, tally nears 20 million
A total of 368,147 new COVID-19 cases were reported in India in the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 19,925,604, according to the health ministry on Monday.
Besides, 3,417 more deaths were recorded since Sunday morning, bringing the death toll to 218,949.
There are a total of 3,413,642 active cases in the country, with an increase of 63,998 through Sunday, while 16,293,003 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals across the country.
The daily figures continue to peak in the country, and the government has imposed new measures to contain the spread. Some school exams have been canceled or postponed in the wake of the deteriorating situation.
India kicked off a nationwide vaccination drive in January, and so far over 157 million vaccination doses have been administered across the country.
Read Also: India launches effort to inoculate all adults against COVID
The third phase of vaccination for people aged above 18 began last Saturday.
Meanwhile, a total of 291,647,037 tests were conducted till Sunday, out of which 1,504,698 tests were conducted on Sunday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research on Monday.
The national capital Delhi, one of the most affected places in the country, witnessed over 20,000 new cases and 407 deaths through Sunday.
So far 16,966 people have died in the national capital due to COVID-19, confirmed Delhi's health department.
Read Also: India's COVID-19 tally crosses 19 mln with over 400000 daily cases
Delhi has been put under a third successive weeklong lockdown till May 10
BJP Office set on fire in India’s West Bengal, party blames Trinamool
The BJP party office in Kolkata’s Arambagh was set ablaze on Sunday evening as the Trinamool Congress inched towards a huge victory in the assembly elections reported NDTV.
The incident has reopened allegations of violence by the ruling party of the country.
The BJP leaders and workers tweeted the video, alleging that Trinamool, the opposition party, has unleashed violence on their workers elsewhere as well.
Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, however, said it was the BJP workers who chased her party's Arambagh candidate Sujata Mondal and hit her on the head near polling booth.
Cellphone recorded videos from Arambag -- a town in Hooghly district 80-odd kilometres from Kolkata -- showed a fire raging through a temporary structure.
Also read: Bucking anti-incumbency, Mamata scores a hat-trick in Bengal
"After results for West Bengal assembly came in, TMC goons burnt down BJP's party office in Arambagh... Is this what Bengal will have to suffer for the next 5 years?" tweeted the BJP's IT cell chief Amit Malviya.
"TMC cadres didn't stop at burning BJP's party offices, they set our booth agent's house in Bishnupur also on fire..." read a second tweet.
The Trinamool is leading in more than 210 seats in the recently concluded assembly election. The BJP, which was targeting 200 seats is leading in 70-plus seats.
The BJP has been vocal about violence in the state over the last two years. The Election Commission said they factored in the security angle while charting the schedule for the elections.
Violence in the run-up to the polls has been followed by the two parties blaming each other.
Bucking anti-incumbency, Mamata scores a hat-trick in Bengal
Indian state of West Bengal's firebrand Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, affectionately called 'Didi', scripted history on Sunday by single handedly pulling off a landslide victory in the assembly election, bucking anti-incumbency and staving off a massive challenge from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Though the Trinamool Congress swept back to power with a resounding majority of well over 210 seats in the 292-member assembly and Mamata secured a third five-year term in office, the 66-year-old lost her own seat in Nandigram to her former protege-turned-BJP's star campaigner Suvendu Adhikari by a thin margin of around 2,000 votes.
The BJP though has made major gains in Bengal, winning some 80 seats. In 2016, the saffron outfit had just three legislators in the state. In fact, it is now the main opposition party in the state as the Left Front, a coalition of Communist parties, has been decimated by the Trinamool Congress. The Left Front ruled Bengal for 34 years -- from 1977 to 2011.
Addressing the media in state capital Kolkata in the evening, Mamata hailed her party's astounding success at the assembly polls as a "victory for Bengal".
"Khela hobe (game) did happen, and we did win. The BJP kept going on and on about double-engine sarkar (government), while I assured you all that I will score a double century. This is Bangla's win... this is Bengal's win... this is your win. This win has saved Bengal, it has saved the culture and tradition of Bengal," she said.
Though Mamata conceded defeat to Adhikari in Nandigram -- the potboiler of the assembly election in Bengal -- the Trinamool supremo said she would challenge the result in a court of law. "Don't worry for Nandigram, for struggle you have to sacrifice something. Let the people of Nandigram give whatever verdict they want, I accept that," she said.
Just an hour before her press meet, Mamata addressed her party workers outside her residence in south Kolkata and urged them not to indulge in any victory celebrations. "Covid is going on. Please follow all Covid protocols and don't put your lives at risk," she said.
Political leaders cutting across party lines, including Prime Minister Modi, took to social media to congratulate the three-time Bengal Chief Minister on her "historic win".
"Congratulations to Mamata Didi for @AITCofficial's win in West Bengal. The Centre (federal government) will continue to extend all possible support to the West Bengal Government to fulfil people’s aspirations and also to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic," Modi tweeted.
Top BJP leader and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also congratulated Mamata."Congratulations to the Chief Minister of West Bengal, @MamataOfficial Didi on her party’s victory in West Bengal assembly elections. My best wishes to her for her next tenure."
Former Chief Minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and head of regional Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav also hailed Mamata's win. "Hearty congratulations to the conscious public, the combative Ms Mamta Banerjee ji and the dedicated leaders and activists of TMC, who defeated the politics of hate of BJP in Bengal!" he tweeted.
In fact, West Bengal witnessed the most high-profile contest in India's recently held state elections. While Mamata harped on being Bengal’s daughter, the BJP asked people to vote for "change and socio-economic development" after nearly 50 years of Communist and Trinamool Congress rule.
"It was BJP's star power versus Trinamool's one-woman army. From Modi to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, the entire top leadership of BJP campaigned in Bengal. But none failed to unseat Didi. She came back again, this time with a bigger mandate," Prof Suneeta Roy, a political pundit, told UNB over the phone from Kolkata.
Though it was a huge setback for the BJP, particularly the Modi-Shah juggernaut, the country's ruling party managed to retain power in the neighbouring northeastern state of Assam -- defying all odds and defeating the country's main opposition Congress party, which tried its best to reclaim its erstwhile citadel.
"People have blessed us. We can say for sure that the BJP will form government in Assam. We are coming back to power with our partners," Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said.
The BJP also won the assembly election in the Union Territory of Puducherry in southern India, but failed to retain power in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, along with its bigger coalition partner AIADMK. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK swept to power in the 243-member assembly after being in the opposition for a decade.
It was also a big disappointment for the BJP as well as the Congress in the southern state of Kerala, where the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, won a historic second term for the first time in 40 years. Kerala is known to vote out incumbents every five years.
Elections to the four states and one Union Territory took place in March and April, just as India started witnessing a ferocious second wave of Covid-19. On Sunday too, India registered close to four lakh cases and nearly 3,700 deaths in a span of 24 hours. The country has been reporting over three lakh daily infections for the last 10 days.
Why India’s pandemic data is vastly undercounted
Even after more than a year of devastating coronavirus surges across the world, the intensity and scale of India’s current crisis stands out, with patients desperate for short supplies of oxygen, pleas for help from overwhelmed hospitals, and images of body bags and funeral pyres.
As daily case counts soar far beyond what other countries have reported, experts caution the official COVID-19 numbers from the world’s second most populous country are likely a massive undercount. But why is India’s data considered inaccurate? Is the data any less accurate than what other nations report? And which numbers give a good indication of the crisis?
IS INDIA COUNTING EVERY CASE?
India is not counting every coronavirus case, but no nation can. Around the world, official tallies generally report only confirmed cases, not actual infections. Cases are missed because testing is so haphazard and because some people infected by the coronavirus experience mild or even no symptoms.
The more limited the testing, the more cases are being missed. The World Health Organization says countries should be doing 10 to 30 tests per confirmed case.
India is doing about five tests for every confirmed case, according to Our World in Data, an online research site. The U.S. is doing 17 tests per confirmed case. Finland is doing 57 tests per confirmed case.
“There are still lots of people who are not getting tested,” said Dr. Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto. “Entire houses are infected. If one person gets tested in the house and reports they’re positive and everyone else in the house starts having symptoms, it’s obvious they have COVID, so why get tested?”
Jha estimates, based on modeling from a previous surge in India, that the true infection numbers could be 10 times higher than the official reports.
WHAT ABOUT DEATHS?
Deaths are a better indicator of the shape of the pandemic curve, Jha said, but there are problems with the data here too.
“The biggest gap is what’s going on in rural India,” Jha said. In the countryside, people often die at home without medical attention, and these deaths are vastly underreported. Families bury or cremate their loved ones themselves without any official record. Seventy percent of the nation’s deaths from all causes occur in rural India in any given year.
Counting rural deaths can be done, as Jha’s work with the Million Death Study has shown. The pre-pandemic project used in-person surveys to count deaths in rural India, capturing details of symptoms and circumstances with results of the “ verbal autopsies ” reviewed and recorded by doctors.
Many low- and middle-income countries have similar undercounts of death data, Jha said, but India could do better.
“It’s a country that’s got a space program. Just counting the dead is a basic function,” he said. “India should be doing much, much better.”
DOES IT MATTER?
Knowing the size and scope of the outbreak and how it is changing helps governments and health officials plan their responses.
Even with the known problems with the data, the trajectory of COVID-19 cases and deaths in India is an alarming reminder of how the virus can rocket through a largely unvaccinated population when precautions are lifted.
“What happens in India matters to the entire world,” said Dr. Amita Gupta, chair of the Johns Hopkins India Institute in a Facebook conversation Thursday. “We care from a humanitarian perspective, a public health perspective, and a health security perspective.”
Bangladeshi man stabbed to death in Malaysia
A Bangladeshi man died while two others were injured after being stabbed with a screwdriver in a brawl with fellow countrymen at a workers' dormitory in Mahkota Industrial Park, Banting last Friday.
Kuala Langat district police chief Superimendant Azizan Tukiman said the victim identified as Babu, 44, died at the scene after he was stabbed in the chest believed to have hit his heart, while his two friends sustained injuries in their stomach, in an incident at about 9 pm.
'The fight involved five Bangladeshi men. The two suspects Red the scene after stabbing the victims: he said in a statement today.
He said a police investigation found that the deceased and the suspects were among 30 foreign workers of a paper mill who tested positive for COVID-19 and were undergoing quarantine at a location not far from the dormitory.
Azizan said the investigation also found that the brawl had started after the suspects had removed the victim's belonging from the dormitory without his consent
'Following the brawl, the suspect who had lost control took a screwdriver and stabbed the victin before stabbing his friends using the same weapon,' he said.
Azizan said both suspects, aged 42 and 4t who were hiding at the Taman Mans Jaya junction, were arrested at 3.30 am yesterday.
'Both of them admitted to having a fight with the victim and nabbed him with a screwdriver; he said.