How Covid apocalypse unfolded in India?
I have been listening daily about the second Covid wave in India and experiencing the fear on people’s minds for this wave. The media is bombarding us with daily new high case count and there is a total negative sentiment all around us. All this thing left me thinking that is this second wave is really that bad? Is this media hype? or is this something we should worry about the most? To answer those questions, I thought, let’s look at the data and make the decision.
We are going through the second wave of Covid Pandemic. The covid cases are recently rising in India and It has achieved a peak on 24 April 2021 With 3,48,544 cases in the last 24 hours. I have been looking at the case plot for a long time. As many epidemiologists are trying to understand, the reasons behind these cases surge. I am curious about how we reached this point. What was the trend in cases look like over time for many states? To understand all these things, We need to visualize the data.
So first, Let's look at overall cases in India over time and this is the plot for that.
This is the trend of the overall cases in India and from the plot, it is visible that We are having a second wave from End of Feb or somewhat mid-march when confirmed cases started to going up as compared to recovered.
Let's look at daily new cases because it is going to tell us a lot.
From the graph, We can see that the first wave started in the month of July 2020 and from onwards we are having more confirmed cases than the recovered. It lasted till mid-September, 2020, and after that number of cured cases was more than confirmed ones. That first wave lasted for more than 3 months. we are having a second wave starting between mid-Feb and this is ongoing. One more stark difference is that the surge in confirmed cases in the second wave is more than the first.
Let's look at the saddest part of this crisis that is reported deaths due to Covid in India.
The above plot tells a lot of this crisis. It seems from the plot that the second wave is more deadly than the first one. The second wave also shows a quick surge in the number of deaths.
What about deaths per confirmed cases? Let's look at that plot as well.
The above plot shows that the number of death per confirmed cases in the first wave was much higher than the second. It was also due to a lack of treatment, knowledge, and medical infrastructure in the first wave. Although the number of daily cases in the second wave is higher, the number of deaths per confirmed case is much lower than the first and that is a good thing.
Let's look at the number of daily confirmed cases per population for multiple states.
From the confirmed cases per Population, Delhi seems to be the worst state and Maharashtra is second. We have two such cases surge for Delhi and this can be the third wave for Delhi. The case surge is sharp.
Conclusion:
With respect to the number of daily cases, Yes this is worse than the last year. But with respect to the death rate, It's not that bad. We are much prepared now as compared to the last year. With such a surge in cases, We might see a strain on the infrastructure for a short time but with precautionary measures and vaccination for all, It won't last for a long time. I just want to say in the end, We have come too far and we are not going to give up now.
