Writ­ing on the Wall: In­dia is likely to over­take Rus­sia in an­other 10 days or so in the to­tal num­ber of con­firmed cases of COVID-19. In­di­a’s tra­jec­tory of num­bers is sim­ply stag­ger­ing. In­dia reached from 1 to 100,000 in 139 days, from 100,000 to 200,000 in 16 days, from 200,000 to 300,000 in 11 days and from 300,000 to 400,000 in 9 days. The num­bers are omi­nous and so is the trend. The writ­ing is one the wall and only the pur­blind can miss it.  Cit­ing the re­port, WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh adds that the re­cent per­mis­sion by In­dia to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ant Glen­mark to mar­ket Favipi­ravir as COVID-19 treat­ment, with a writ­ten con­sent form, only adds to the con­fu­sion and fears of a uni­ver­sal drug trial with In­di­ans as guinea pigs.

AS WE TALK COVID-19 STA­TIS­TICS, RE­PUTED MED­ICAL JOUR­NAL THE LANCET in its lat­est study re­leased on 15 June 2020 con­firms that one in every five in­hab­i­tants of planet earth is sus­cep­ti­ble to con­tract­ing this in­fec­tion, es­pe­cially those who have a his­tory of other ail­ments.

The lat­est re­search en­ti­tled, “Global, re­gional, and na­tional es­ti­mates of the pop­u­la­tion at in­creased risk of se­vere COVID-19 due to un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tions in 2020: a mod­el­ling study” claims, “About one in five in­di­vid­u­als world­wide could be at in­creased risk of se­vere COVID-19, should they be­come in­fected, due to un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tions, but this risk varies con­sid­er­ably by age.”

It adds the rider, “Our es­ti­mates are un­cer­tain and fo­cus on un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions rather than other risk fac­tors such as eth­nic­ity, so­cioe­co­nomic de­pri­va­tion, and obe­sity, but pro­vide a start­ing point for con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als that might need to be shielded or vac­ci­nated as the global pan­demic un­folds.”

The Lancet -with a stand­ing of two cen­turies, says, “We es­ti­mated that 1·7 bil­lion (UI 1·0–2·4) peo­ple, com­pris­ing 22% (UI 15–28) of the global pop­u­la­tion, have at least one un­der­ly­ing con­di­tion that puts them at in­creased risk of se­vere COVID-19 if in­fected (rang­ing from <5% of those younger than 20 years to >66% of those aged 70 years or older). We es­ti­mated that 349 mil­lion (186–787) peo­ple (4% [3–9] of the global pop­u­la­tion) are at high risk of se­vere COVID-19 and would re­quire hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sion if in­fected (rang­ing from <1% of those younger than 20 years to ap­prox­i­mately 20% of those aged 70 years or older).”

It fur­ther adds, “We es­ti­mated 6% (3–12) of males to be at high risk com­pared with 3% (2–7) of fe­males. The share of the pop­u­la­tion at in­creased risk was high­est in coun­tries with older pop­u­la­tions, African coun­tries with high HIV/​AIDS preva­lence, and small is­land na­tions with high di­a­betes preva­lence. Es­ti­mates of the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als at in­creased risk were most sen­si­tive to the preva­lence of chronic kid­ney dis­ease, di­a­betes, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and chronic res­pi­ra­tory dis­ease.”

Lancet has pub­lished 62 stud­ies be­tween Feb 15 and March 20, 2020. The pre­sent study says, “We es­ti­mated that 349 mil­lion (UI 186–787) peo­ple—4% (3–9) of the global pop­u­la­tion—are at high risk of se­vere COVID-19 and would re­quire hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sion if in­fected. The pro­por­tion of in­di­vid­u­als at high risk in each age group ranged from ap­prox­i­mately one in every 900 in­di­vid­u­als younger than 20 years to one in every five in­di­vid­u­als aged 70 years or older.”

For the doubt­ing Thomases, what is Lancet and what does it stand for? The Lancet founded by Thomas Wak­ley, in its own words has since 1823, “strived to make sci­ence widely avail­able so that med­i­cine can serve, and trans­form so­ci­ety, and pos­i­tively im­pact the lives of peo­ple.” Un­doubt­edly, “Over the past two cen­turies, The Lancet has sought to ad­dress ur­gent top­ics in our so­ci­ety, ini­ti­ate de­bate, put sci­ence into con­text, and in­flu­ence de­ci­sion-mak­ers around the world.”

The Lancet re­tains at its core the be­lief that med­i­cine must serve so­ci­ety, that knowl­edge must trans­form so­ci­ety, that the best sci­ence must lead to bet­ter lives. The Lancet is fo­cussed to main­tain the high­est stan­dards for med­ical sci­ence, im­prove hu­man lives is the only end goal and it is fo­cussed to in­crease the so­cial im­pact of sci­ence.

The pre­sent study of Lancet humbly con­cludes, “With phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing mea­sures of vary­ing in­ten­sity in place world­wide, and sub­stan­tial un­cer­tainty about the trans­mis­si­bil­ity of the virus in dif­fer­ent con­texts, the re­sults of any at­tempt to cal­cu­late the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als that will even­tu­ally be in­fected in dif­fer­ent coun­tries will be highly un­cer­tain. Nonethe­less, we hope our es­ti­mates will pro­vide a use­ful start­ing point for con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als that might need to be shielded or vac­ci­nated as the global COVID-19 pan­demic un­folds”

The Lancet pro­claims that it sets agen­das, cre­ates con­text and in­forms lead­ers. Is any­one in In­dia read­ing and lis­ten­ing to the warn­ings?