India COVID 2nd wave : What do we know?

It has been almost been a month since covid-19’s 2nd wave hit India. The cases have grown at an alarming pace of 4.5% daily(from the previous trough) which translates into a doubling rate of approx. 15 days.

It is worthwhile to note that India has also passed its previous peak on 6th April 2021.

Financial markets in India have taken note of this and the fact the India has to stop export of vaccines and drugs has only made disease management difficult for the Centre and State governments. Moreover, the largest vaccine producer in the world is now hitting production limits and needs around Rs. 3000 crore for expanding production facility which is affecting the vaccination program of India and the world. To say that macroeconomic forecasts and share prices in Indian stock markets are dependent on a successful vaccination program is an understatement. In the recent Monetary policy report published by the RBI, progress on vaccination is seen as one of the key drivers of growth and inflation expectations going forward.

Due to all this, various state governments are pondering over a need for a lockdown. But is it really needed? We know that several mutants of the virus have surfaced in Indian samples too. But what about other behavioral factors such as adherence to social distancing and wearing masks regularly? Have they changed? Has the disease become more deadly? We try to answer some of those below.

Data source

We use data from https://www.covid19india.org/ and divide the data into two parts: Mar 2020-Feb 2021 is the 1st wave and Mar 2021-Apr 2021 is the 2nd wave. We define the following two variables

1. Case positivity rate(CPR): proportion of tests that come out to be COVID-19 positive.
2. Daily Death rate (DDR): proportion of COVID-19 +ve people who die. We assume that people die 14 days later after testing positive.

Analysis

Here are the charts depicting CPR for the 1st and 2nd wave

Comparison of CPR in two COVID-19 waves in India

Looking at the graphs it can be inferred that either (excuse the scale differences)

1. The new wave is increasingly more transmissible though it is yet to reach the peak CPR seen in 1st wave.

OR

2. People have become increasingly casual about following protocols about how to live in the new normal.

From the above, it is pertinent to note that ever since COVID-19 hit India in March 2020 testing facilities have been ramped by at least 10 times and hence, similar CPR peaks as seen in 1st wave will result in around 3 lakh daily cases in India. At the current doubling rate as pointed out earlier it will take another two weeks for that Daily caseload to show up.

Let us turn our attention to daily death rate (DDR).

Comparison of DDR in two COVID-19 waves in India

Please notice vastly different scales on the left. It can be seen that

1. DDR in 2nd wave is low compared to the 1st wave.
2. The concern is the trend in 2nd wave is positively sloped whereas in 1st wave it was negatively sloped. This will pose challenges for the government if it continues this way.

From these two small descriptive analysis, we can see that 2nd wave is neither more contagious (by itself) nor more deadly. Attentive reader might wonder then why is it that news of hospitals getting overloaded with patients and shortage of vaccines and drugs so abound.

I think the answer lies more in ramping up supply. In the 1st wave, lots of stadiums/schools and temporary hospitalization facilities sprung up in Mumbai and Delhi for example, which allowed the government to perform disease management properly. Moreover, most of that ramping up was done when the nation went into lockdown.

It can also be attributed to behavioral factors. People via social media, word-of-mouth or otherwise have come to know about how to live with the disease and have become more health conscious. This might have led to people letting their guard down and hence more load on hospitals.

Conclusion

Since disease management in the 1st wave was done by temporarily upgrading supply(read hospitals/treatment facilities) rather than focusing on permanent upgradation which takes time anyway, the 2nd wave with more caseload will pose problems in disease management and hence, I believe that more and more states will impose lockdowns to deal with this although a nationwide lockdown is ruled out due to political reasons.

Moreover, if the Central government does hypocrisy by continuing on the election rallies in West Bengal while preaching social distancing to the rest of India, then 3 lakh cases per day in the next two weeks won’t be surprising.