The surge of COVID-19 in Karnataka, which is among the badly hit States of the country, is expected to continue in the coming days with the number of cases and deaths expected to touch 4.5 lakh and 6,700 respectively by September 12, claims a study.
Jeevan Raksha, a public-private partnership initiative involving Public Health Foundation of India and Proxima, a management consulting firm, had deployed its pandemic management system using publicly available COVID-19 data to arrive at this forecast, with a view to helping the authorities come up steps necessary to reduce mortality.
The number of cases in Karnataka stood at 2.4 lakh and deaths at 4,201 on August 18, according to statistics released by the State’s Department of Health and Family Welfare.
“As part of our trend analysis, we had projected the positivity and mortality for India as well as select states for the month of July /August (upto 15th). The projections have been by and large accurate”, claimed Mr Mysore Sanjeev, convenor of Project Jeevan Raksha.
On July 20 when the number of cases were 11.54 lakh and deaths were 28,089, Jeevan Raksha’s forecasting module - Proxima Pandemic Management System (PPMS) - had predicted that the number of cases and deaths in India would reach 25 lakh and 45,000 respectively by August 15, claimed Mysore Sanjeev, convenor of Project Jeevan Raksha.The actual numbers were 25.27 lakh cases and 49,161 deaths.
On July 20, when the number of cases in Karnataka were 67,420 and deaths 1,403, Proxima Pandemic Management System (PPMS) had predicted that the State will report 2.25 lakh cases and 6,000 deaths by August 15. Though the actual number of cases reached 2.11 lakh cases on August 15, the number of deaths were 3,718, indicating a wider margin of error, stated Mysore Sanjeev, convenor of Project Jeevan Raksha.
The continuing surge in cases across the country has been attributed by Jeevan Raksha to the “auto mode” many States have slipped into.
The PPMS predicted that the number of COVID-19 cases in the country would reach 45 lakh to 47.5 lakh and deaths would be in the range of 75,000 to 90,000 by September 12.
“Many States have gone into auto mode. Amidst livelihood compulsions and geo-political situation, the momentum to flatten the curve is getting lost,” the analysis said, while emphasising the need to pay more attention to quarantine management. which was a critical area in containing the pandemic.Referring to the forecast on deaths, the analysis said the “strategy, process and competency required to manage the pandemic when the virus has infected 100K people is different when over 2.5 million people are infected and 50,000 are dead”. The performance review should shift to reducing the number of deaths, the study added.
Silver lining
The analysis, however, points to a reduction in the Moving Growth Rate (MGR) percentage of positivity from 110% on July 4 to 87% on August 15 across the country, which indicates “the slowing down of velocity of virus spread”.
“Decrease in MGR will increase the doubling period and vice-versa,” the analysis said, while attributing the decrease in MGR to “a combination of intervention and increase in base value”.
A similar drop had been witnessed in the MGR percentage of mortality from 110% to 56% during a 30-day period ending August 15.
