India has conducted one million tests. The positive rate per hundred tests continues to hover 4.5% with many of the states recording less than the national average. There has been constant criticism, shrill at that, India has not conducted enough number of tests. In terms of absolute numbers India now is in the top ten in the world in having conducted highest number of tests. In fact, when other countries completed their round of one million tests, the only nation that could be deemed to have been close to India’s figures was Germany which recorded around 1.8 times the positive rate per hundred relative to India. Spain by then was recording 20% positive rate while Italy was registering around 16% positive rate.
To the critics, the goalpost has now shifted to per million basis. They argue tests are to be measured per million population and not in absoluted numbers. There are experts who have demonstrated that Chernoff bound amply explains the testing criteria and the per million bogey is irrelevant and meaningless. It is nobody’s case that India should not test more but the current volume of tests do indicate India has escaped the brunt of the virus. The positive rate per hundred is consistently around 4% throughout varying between 3-4.5%.
The sheer population of India makes it difficult to compare with any other country. Therefore an appropriate measure would be to compare the states with other countries. To do this exercise, one needs to take those countries which have comparable population relative to these states. This gives a good opportunity to gauge the enormity of the battle India is up against. The sources for the data were the population figures from United Nations database and for the Indian states from the website of the Census department. Since the next Indian census is due, the earlier census is outdated. From various sources, estimates are arrived for the population figure state wise in India.
The analysis can be begin with Uttar Pradesh. The comparable population sizes are Brazil, Nigeria and Bangladesh. While UP has recorded under 3000 cases, Bangladesh which is less in population has recorded 10k+ cases with similar number of tests per population. Brazil has 100 thousand cases though it is just 1.2 times the population of UP. Around 30% positives are reported to the total tests conducted relative to UP’s less than 4%. Nigeria has similar number of cases though the positives are nearly 1 in 7 to the total tests conducted. Moreover, tests per million is less than hundred. Further, barring Bangladesh, UP has higher density that Nigeria or Brazil.
Maharashtra is the worst performing state in India with more than 13000 cases and a positive to total test ratio at around 8%. As a matter of fact, more than a third of cases come from this state with 90% of them coming from the Mumbai-Pune region. More than half the deaths in India also come from Maharashtra. The best comparison would be Mexico or Japan which have slightly higher levels of population. Mexico is closing onto twenty five thousand cases with 2000+ deaths. In contrast Maharashtra has 550 deaths. Further Japan despite being acclaimed as a success story still reports 15000 cases relative to which Maharashtra is not doing so bad. Mumbai Metropolitan Region home to nearly two billion people nearly double of New York is reporting around 10000 cases in contrast to New York where more than 2% of the population is impacted. This would do well in comparison to Delhi which too is more than double the population of New York while reporting under 5000 cases. This itself shows for the all criticism, India has been doing good in comparison to other countries including highly affluent and advanced cities like New York.
Bihar can compared to Philippines and Ethiopia. While Bihar is reporting around 500 cases, Phillipines is reporting 10k+ cases. Interestingly Ethiopia which is economically more similar to Bihar is reporting less than 200 cases while conducting similar number of tests like Bihar. It would be interesting to examine low incidence in regions like Bihar and Ethiopia.
The second worst performing state has been Gujarat with its largest city Ahmedabad bearing the brunt. While Gujarat is reporting around 6000 cases, its comparable country Italy needs no reiteration about the state of affairs. Italy perhaps is the worst affected country in death incidence along with Belgium and Spain. In fact Karnataka too which has similar population levels has reported hardly 600 odd cases out of 70000+ tests it has conducted. France which too has a population slightly more than these states too is one of the worst affected countries in the world. Rajasthan which too is reporting 3000+ cases can be compared with Britain another one of the worst affected countries in the world and Thailand which is reporting similar number of cases. To its credit, Thailand has done extensive testing, closed down a later and suffered the Tablighi problem though with less effect relative to Rajasthan. Yet the performance of Rajasthan is not bad when compared with similar sized populations. Similarly relative to Thailand, Tamil Nadu is performing badly but far better than Great Britain. In fact Iran and Turkey with around 15% more population compared to Tamil Nadu are suffering extensively. Moreover, Tamil Nadu’s numbers must also be contrasted to the number of tests it has conducted with positives being less than 3%. Madhya Pradesh which too belongs to a similar basket, performs better relative to Turkey or Iran by a large margin, but MP needs to beef up its testing to keep pace with the standards set by TN.
Andhra Pradesh is best compared with Spain and the two regions can hardly merit the comparison. Andhra has managed pretty well while Spain has struggled heavily a la Italy and Britain. Testing in Andhra too has been extensive with low positive percentage. Telangana too compares well with Saudi Arabia from the similar basket. Yet, in terms of tests Saudi fares very highly than Telangana. Uzbekistan another country in this basket has double the cases of Telangana but the amount of testing is very extensive in Uzbekistan. Hence while comparing similar baskets, Telangana performs badly one of the few states to do so in India.
The comparisons can go with many other states each a microcosm of a country in its own. Yet the analysis was to demonstrate the relative performance on some parameters like case incidence, death incidence, and test incidence with other countries of comparable size. The Indian story is that it has come out relatively well in the battle against the epidemic fuelled by the Chinese originated corona virus. The battle is just perhaps touched halfway and needs to be fought hard in the days and weeks to come to sustain the gains arising out of the lockdown. On both fronts of cases and deaths, India is coming out on top though peak seems some distance away. There can be matter of debate over the timing of lockdown and increased testing but either way, things are not bad.
Thoughts on Theory and Practice 