Covid curve doesn’t bend in Kerala however why state isn’t overly frightened but

In the final 4 months, Kerala has recorded greater than 7 lakh coronavirus infections, greater than another state in India. For the final 45 days, it has constantly been the highest contributor of latest circumstances. The state now has the best variety of lively circumstances within the nation, comprising virtually 30 per cent of India’s whole.
But whereas Kerala is the worst hotspot of the epidemic within the nation now, what’s exceptional is that the rise in circumstances has not resulted in an identical enhance within the variety of deaths. In truth, Kerala has one of many lowest dying counts among the many main states.
With greater than 8 lakh confirmed infections to date, Kerala has the fifth highest caseload within the nation. But there are 11 states which have recorded extra deaths than Kerala, together with states like Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab, which have three to 5 instances fewer circumstances.
The state authorities says that in contrast to many different locations, Kerala had managed to keep away from a “sudden peak”, and that has ensured fewer deaths.
“In other states, the cases went up and have started to come down, but that resulted in higher number of deaths. Our main strategy has been to prevent the spread to very large numbers of people all at once, and limit the number of deaths,” Kerala Health Minister Ok Ok Shailaja instructed The Indian Express in an interview.
With 3,305 deaths as on Saturday (together with ones that the state authorities has assessed to have been brought on by co-morbidities), Kerala has a mortality fee of about 0.4 per cent, three and a half instances decrease than the nationwide common. Maharashtra has a mortality fee of two.6, whereas the determine for Delhi is 1.7.
“In Kerala, our daily death toll never went beyond 35. And these are mostly elderly people or those with co-morbidities. Kerala’s achievement has been in limiting the deaths. Even now, a state with such population density, the death rate is less than half a per cent,” Shailaja stated.
But whereas the dying fee has been saved in test, comparatively talking, the persevering with development of a really excessive variety of recent infections in Kerala, when all different states have seen their numbers declining, is one thing that isn’t very properly defined.
Since September 1, the state has reported greater than 5,500 circumstances on daily basis on common. On 70 of as of late, the state was the only largest contributor of circumstances within the nation. During this identical time, every day numbers in Maharashtra got here down from a peak of about 24,000 to about 3,000. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, which at one level have been reporting over 10,000 circumstances a day, are actually discovering new circumstances within the decrease a whole lot.
“It is intriguing, no doubt. And in the absence of sero-survey data, it is difficult to say what exactly is resulting in these numbers in Kerala. It is possible that because Kerala managed to contain the spread in the first phase, it is now left with a larger proportion of people who are uninfected, and susceptible. In other states, it happened in reverse. A larger proportion of population got infected initially, but that meant there were fewer susceptible people left. But as I said, this is just a guess. It is not based on any data or evidence,” Prof Gagandeep Kang of Christian Medical College, Vellore, stated.
Dr Shahid Jameel, director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, agreed. “That can surely be a possibility. Also, the fact that the state has received a large number of people from other countries. That might be adding to the susceptible population as well. But it is very difficult to explain what exactly is happening without looking at relevant data. There are other states which received large numbers of internal migrants, but never had such a prolonged surge,” he stated.

Gautam Menon, professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University, supplied one other believable clarification.
“This is also just an informed guess, but one of the possible reasons we can think is related to Kerala’s urbanisation. Because Kerala is now almost entirely urbanised with very high density of population, and there are hardly any open rural spaces in the state, the reporting of cases could be higher. In other states, a majority of cases are getting reported from the urban centres. There is a reasonable chance that cases emerging in the villages are not being reported in those states. Kerala has no rural areas and, therefore, the cases may not be hidden,” he stated.
“We can see some supporting evidence in the cases that are being reported from Mumbai and Pune, for example. In these adjoining cities, the numbers have not reduced considerably over the last one month. Of course, they have reduced drastically from their peaks. But in the last one month, these numbers seem to have stabilised. These urban pockets would also have better reporting of cases compared to the interior areas, for example,” Prof Menon stated.