Two months from now, when Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi will hoist the Tri­color from the Red Fort and ad­dress the na­tion on In­de­pen­dence Day, Au­gust 15, In­dia will have 18.5 lakh coro­n­avirus pos­i­tive cases every day. Yes, EVERY DAY. It is an es­ti­mate shared by the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary of In­dia, Ra­jiv Gauba, with the health sec­re­taries of var­i­ous states and union ter­ri­to­ries of In­dia. Does it shock you? The cri­sis that will hit you will be more than shock­ing, it would send jit­ters down your spine, elab­o­rates sea­soned in­ves­tiga­tive, se­nior jour­nal­ist SP Singh.

THE NUM­BERS WILL SHOCK EVERY­ONE -those who have been look­ing for­ward to re­open­ing the econ­omy, school man­age­ments ea­ger to see chil­dren in classes, par­ents wor­ried about the ed­u­ca­tion loss their kids are suf­fer­ing, shop­keep­ers who are grate­ful that nor­mal crowds are re­turn­ing to the mar­kets, gym own­ers ea­gerly look­ing for­ward to re­open­ing, ho­tels and malls mak­ing prepa­ra­tions for Un­lock 2.0 very soon.

But 15 Au­gust is too far away. You will be scared enough to know the num­bers in the next few days. Re­mem­ber that all these num­bers were shared of­fi­cially by the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Gauba with state/​Union Ter­ri­to­ries health sec­re­taries in a meet­ing on April 26, the same day the Prime Min­is­ter held a video con­fer­ence with all the chief min­is­ters or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

But first, the num­bers. On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, June 6, the Union Min­istry of Health and Wel­fare put the num­ber of con­firmed cases of the coro­n­avirus in In­dia at 2,36,657. Sat­ur­day, June 6, reg­is­tered a record sin­gle-day spike of 9,887 cases while 6,642 peo­ple had died by that morn­ing, 8 am.

Of­fi­cial es­ti­mates shared by the Cen­tre with states re­veal that on June 15, the num­ber of corona virus-pos­i­tive cases will be 3,95,727 while In­dia will see 22,400 new cases every day.

On Au­gust 15, In­di­a’s to­tal cases will be 2,74,96,513, that is a quar­ter shy of three crores. On this In­de­pen­dence Day, the coun­try will see 18,46,781 pa­tients be­ing con­firmed as corona pos­i­tive new cases every day.

Sim­i­larly, on June 30, the to­tal cases will be 11,22,839 while new cases per day will be 75,415.

On July 15, In­dia will see 2,13,982 new cases per day and the to­tal num­ber of con­firmed cases of Covid-19 will be 31,85,952.

On July 31, to­tal cases will be just un­der One Crore. To be pre­cise, the dou­bling model pro­jected the case count as 96,90,715, with 6,50,869 new cases added per day.

On Au­gust 15, In­di­a’s to­tal cases will be 2,74,96,513, that is a quar­ter shy of three crores. On this In­de­pen­dence Day, the coun­try will see 18,46,781 pa­tients be­ing con­firmed as corona pos­i­tive new cases every day.

Yes, the data will shock you. Since it was shared with state au­thor­i­ties across In­dia, why has it not shocked you all this while, con­sid­er­ing it was re­vealed on April 26 it­self?

Be­cause gov­ern­ments, ca­coph­o­nous me­dia and shift­ing at­ten­tion spans can con­fuse you no end, and our pro­cliv­ity to turn at the wind­mills rather than pause at some­thing truly sub­stan­tive is by now leg­endary. Af­ter all, we are a peo­ple who are told that three sib­lings sit­ting in a row in an air­craft can­not sit in the car dri­ven by their mother be­cause that will spread the virus. Or that the virus trav­els from Delhi to Haryana for a cer­tain phase, but then has to be stopped when it trav­els from Haryana to Delhi. And we gulp it all!

Here is what hogged the me­dia head­lines when the top bu­reau­crat of the coun­try shared the shock­ing data with of­fi­cials tasked to take care of the na­tion’s pub­lic health:

Two days be­fore Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Gauba in­formed var­i­ous state of­fi­cials that In­dia will cross 165,000 con­firmed coro­n­avirus cases stage on May 31, the Union Gov­ern­ment pre­sented a chart on April 24 pre­dict­ing that In­dia will have ZERO new daily cases by May 16.

The chart pre­sented by Dr VK Paul on April 24 pre­dict­ing the trend of Covid-19 cases in In­dia. (Source – Min­istry of Health & Fam­ily Wel­fare)

Dr V K Paul, an in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of the Niti Aayog and the brain be­hind Ayush­man Bharat, pre­sented de­tailed graph­ics and charts to claim that In­dia will start flat­ten­ing the curve in early May. This was on April 24.

On April 26, the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary said In­dia will have 165,000 cases on May 31.

In re­al­ity, In­dia had 165,799 cases on May 29 it­self.

(The Gov­ern­ment of In­di­a’s daily fig­ures per­tain to 24-hour pe­riod from 8 am to 8 am. So, data for June 6 means data from 8 am June 5 to 8 am June 6.)

Now, VK Paul is not a man to be taken lightly. He heads the Cen­tre’s Em­pow­ered Group-1, re­spon­si­ble for co­or­di­nat­ing med­ical emer­gency man­age­ment plan as the coun­try tack­les Covid-19.

On May 16, the day VK Paul in­formed the coun­try, with the help of graphs and slides, that there will be ZERO cases in In­dia, we ac­tu­ally saw 4,987 cases, the high­est sin­gle-day spike till then, while the to­tal num­ber of cases that day was 90,648 while 4,864 cases had come in just that day.

When VK Paul’s zero cases date of May 16 came and went, some jour­nal­ists touched base with him, and the Niti Aayog plan­ner said it was all a “mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion”.

“No one has ever said that the num­ber of cases would go down to zero at a par­tic­u­lar date, there is a mis­un­der­stand­ing, which needs to be cor­rected. For the mis­un­der­stand­ing, I feel sorry and apol­o­gise,” he said.

It is pos­si­ble VK Paul’s words were “mis­in­ter­preted” and we will come to that soon. In fact, as is the wont with most se­nior bu­reau­crats and politi­cians, Paul’s real bur­den that day was to hail the Lock­Down de­ci­sion of his boss Naren­dra Modi.

When the Press In­for­ma­tion Bu­reau of In­dia (PIB) tweeted Dr VK Paul’s graph im­me­di­ately af­ter his press con­fer­ence, it said: “De­ci­sion of lock­down was timely, curve has be­gun to flat­ten. The na­tion has shown that lock­down has been ef­fec­tive (in) sav­ing lives, con­tain­ing Covid-19 in­fec­tion and slow­ing down dou­bling rate.”

PIB tweets VK Paul claims on ef­fec­tive­ness of lock­down

His ex­act words on April 24? Sam­ple this:

“Please ye le kar chaliye ki hamare desh main jo pic­ture hum aapke saamne la rahe hain, yahi pic­ture Covid-19 ki by and large hai. Koi un­der­cur­rent nahi hai ki (Covid-19) faila hua hai…ki pata hi nahi hai…Ye le kar chaliye ki bilkul aisa nahi hai. Baki datasets bhi yahi dikhate hain (Please trust that the data that is re­leased by the gov­ern­ment, by and large, re­flects the true pic­ture of Covid-19 in In­dia. There is no un­der­cur­rent and it would be wrong to as­sume that Covid-19 is wide­spread in In­dia).”

So, on April 24, this Niti Aayog mem­ber hand­picked by Naren­dra Modi was claim­ing that the virus was not wide­spread in In­dia. On April 26, the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary of In­dia was telling health sec­re­taries that there will be 22,400 new cases per day on June 15, and 75,415 new cases per day on June 30, and 2,13,982 new cases per day on July 15 and 6,50,869 new cases per day on July 31.

And that we will cel­e­brate our In­de­pen­dence Day with 18,46,781 new con­firmed cases of coro­n­avirus that day.

Why has the In­dian me­dia, with few ho­n­ourable ex­cep­tions, not force­fully asked the In­dian gov­ern­ment and the Niti Aayog to share with the pub­lic the logic and method­ol­ogy that went be­hind the claim that the pan­demic will sub­side by May? What were those de­ci­sions that they took which, for some pos­si­bly very un­der­stand­able rea­son, did not work?

It was lovely to hear Dr VK Paul’s re­as­sur­ing voice as the graph­ics beamed from the screen in that dark­ened room:

“Hum ek bahut hi ef­fec­tive aur jor­daar tareeke se Covid-19 ko con­trol karne main suc­cess­ful ho gaye gain.”   (We have man­aged to con­trol Covid-19 in a very suc­cess­ful way.) This was April 24.

BUT WHO WILL ASK THESE QUES­TIONS?

When you thought all branches of the gov­ern­ment were in over­drive to de­vise mea­sures and ramp up in­fra­struc­ture, set­ting in place pro­to­cols and shar­ing the truth with the peo­ple, the ac­tual ef­fort was ac­tu­ally be­ing spent on con­trol­ling the nar­ra­tive, not the spread of the virus.

On April 9, In­di­a’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs (MEA) claimed that but for the lock­down, the coun­try would have had 8.2 lakh Covid-19 cases by April 15. This claim was based on some study by the In­dian Coun­cil of Med­ical Re­search (ICMR). No one from the ICMR spoke, briefed or tweeted any­thing about the study. A day later, the face of All Knowl­edge About Pan­demic in In­dia, Joint Sec­re­tary (Health) Lav Agar­wal, said ICMR has not con­ducted any such study. The me­dia thought there was no rea­son to ask any fur­ther ques­tions about ICMR stud­ies quoted by Govt of In­di­a’s fed­eral min­istries van­ish­ing into thin air at the drop of a ques­tion.

Twenty-four hours still later, the ICMR study came back into ex­is­tence. The same Lav Agar­wal, the repos­i­tory of all in­for­ma­tion and eva­sive tac­tics, said the 8.2 lakh fig­ure was quoted by the MEA and was based on an in­ter­nal as­sess­ment of his own Health Min­istry, a fact he clearly did not know a few hours ear­lier. Later, his Health Min­istry even tweeted the 8.2 lakh claim!

The ICMR has not spo­ken till date about this 8.2 lakh study. It did not ask the MEA why it was dragged into the row. In fact, the ICMR did not even re­mind any­one that an ear­lier study it had car­ried out had put the num­ber of symp­to­matic cases at about 10 mil­lion in Delhi and 4 mil­lion in Mum­bai, peak­ing in mid-March. This was­n’t a non-ex­is­tent ICMR study like the one quoted by the MEA; the ICMR had ac­tu­ally pub­lished this math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ling study, ti­tled “Pru­dent pub­lic health in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies to con­trol the coro­n­avirus dis­ease trans­mis­sion in In­dia: A math­e­mat­i­cal model-based ap­proach.”

New Cu­mu­la­tive Cases Dou­bling Rate for In­dia – A chart pre­sented by Dr VK Paul, mem­ber, NITI Aayog and chair­man Em­pow­ered Group 1, on April-24. 
Source MO­HFW

Based on the SEIR (Sus­cep­ti­ble-Ex­posed-In­fec­tious-Re­cov­ered ) model, cap­tur­ing the nat­ural his­tory of Covid-19 and its trans­mis­sion dy­nam­ics, this study was jointly done by Trans­la­tional Global Health Pol­icy Re­search Cell (De­part­ment of Health Re­search), ICM­R’s Di­vi­sion of Epi­demi­ol­ogy & Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases, School of Pub­lic Health, Na­tional In­sti­tute of Epi­demi­ol­ogy, Chen­nai and De­part­ment of In­fec­tious Dis­ease Epi­demi­ol­ogy, School of Pub­lic Health, Im­pe­r­ial Col­lege, St. Mary’s Hos­pi­tal, Lon­don.

Mean­while, the Cen­tre For Dis­ease Dy­nam­ics, Eco­nom­ics & Pol­icy (CD­DEP), with of­fices in Wash­ing­ton DC and New Delhi, came up with its own model for In­dia and claimed that “com­mu­nity trans­mis­sion of COVID-19 in In­dia most likely started in early March.”

It claimed that “at base­line (with­out in­ter­ven­tions), be­tween 300 and 400 mil­lion In­di­ans are likely to be in­fected by July. Most of these cases will be mild. At the peak (some­where be­tween April and May 2020), 100 mil­lion in­di­vid­u­als will be in­fected. Of these, ap­prox­i­mately 10 mil­lion will be se­vere and about 2-4 mil­lion will re­quire hos­pi­tal­iza­tion.”

The CD­DEP called it “the most crit­i­cal pe­riod” and stressed the “need for large, tem­po­rary hos­pi­tals to han­dle this pa­tient load over the next three-month pe­riod.”

It also warned that “sec­ondary, hos­pi­tal-based trans­mis­sion fu­els the epi­demic” and re­minded that the avail­able ICU- and ven­ti­la­tor-equipped bed ca­pac­ity in In­dia was “wholly in­ad­e­quate to the num­ber of in­fec­tions at epi­demic peak.”

Cur­rent ca­pac­ity is es­ti­mated at 30-50K ven­ti­la­tors na­tion­wide and about 70-100K ICU beds, but then data in In­dia is al­ways to be taken with a healthy dose of cyn­i­cism.

BUT HOW MANY PEO­PLE WILL ES­CAPE THE COVID-19 DATA NOW?

Here comes the catch now as we start mov­ing to­wards the mid-June mark. The gov­ern­ment in In­di­a’s na­tional cap­i­tal has openly an­nounced that it will not count Coro­n­avirus Pos­i­tive peo­ple as Corona-af­fected. It ac­tu­ally fielded its Chief Min­is­ter, a man called Arvind Ke­jri­wal, to an­nounce this on live tele­vi­sion. He ac­tu­ally is­sued ad­ver­tise­ments to say the same thing. But the In­dian Me­dia has no ob­jec­tion to it.

And not only are those who are asymp­to­matic are sup­posed to not go in for a test and to con­fine them­selves at home, but even those with mild symp­toms should fol­low the same course. In the days of the wide­spread pan­demic, you have some fever, some cough, some headache, the food is not tast­ing good, and you think you have got­ten coro­n­avirus and you know that the fel­low work­ing next to you in the of­fice for long hours has been found corona pos­i­tive, DO NOT GO TO A DOC­TOR, DO NOT SEEK TO BE TESTED, DO NOT LAND UP AT A HOS­PI­TAL.

Delhi Chief Min­is­ter Arvind Ke­jri­wal through TV ad­ver­tise­ments

Ke­jri­wal, and we be­lieve other chief min­is­ters, states, and most likely the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, will also fol­low suit. IN­DIA IS NOW OF­FI­CIALLY PRE­PARED TO CON­T­A­M­I­NATE DATA. Here is how this will be done:

In ad­ver­tise­ment af­ter ad­ver­tise­ment, Ke­jri­wal is telling peo­ple that if any­one finds him­self/​her­self a risk can­di­date for coro­n­avirus, but is asymp­to­matic, then he or she should not try to reach out to a doc­tor and land up at any hos­pi­tal. In fact, such a per­son should not even try to get tested. The gov­ern­men­t’s rec­om­men­da­tion is to self-quar­an­tine one­self, stay at home, ride it out. There is no oblig­a­tion on any­one to re­port the case any­where.

Over 80% of Corona pa­tients have ei­ther no symp­toms or very mild symp­toms. Such pa­tients can re­cover in the com­fort of their home

In the cen­tre pages of to­day’s news­pa­pers, we have pub­lished de­tailed guide­lines on #Home­Iso­la­tion. Pl keep these pages safely and share with oth­ers. pic.twit­ter.com/​M4b3M4y­bxo

— Arvind Ke­jri­wal (@Arvin­d­Ke­jri­wal) May 29, 2020

And not only are those who are asymp­to­matic are sup­posed to not go in for a test and to con­fine them­selves at home, but even those with mild symp­toms should fol­low the same course. In the days of the wide­spread pan­demic, you have some fever, some cough, some headache, the food is not tast­ing good, and you think you have got­ten coro­n­avirus and you know that the fel­low work­ing next to you in the of­fice for long hours has been found corona pos­i­tive, DO NOT GO TO A DOC­TOR, DO NOT SEEK TO BE TESTED, DO NOT LAND UP AT A HOS­PI­TAL.

Stay at home. Take care. Ask your fam­ily to serve you food from a dis­tance. Wear a mask. Wash your hands fre­quently. Only if it wors­ens should you seek to be tested, or land up at a hos­pi­tal. And how easy it is to find a hos­pi­tal bed, and how eas­ier still it is to find one with oxy­gen and how it is eas­i­est to find one equipped with a ven­ti­la­tor, you al­ready know too well.

Now, all these self-di­ag­nosed pa­tients with corona-like symp­toms, likely to be corona symp­toms, or with coro­n­avirus but asymp­to­matic and never tested, will NOT FIG­URE IN ANY DATA SET.

Of what value will then be the data of corona-virus pos­i­tive cases given out by the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia? How will you know how many cases In­dia will have on Au­gust 15 when the Prime Min­is­ter climbs the steps to hoist the Tri­color at the Red Fort and ad­dresses the na­tion from the ram­parts of the fort built by a mem­ber of the dy­nasty that is prob­a­bly the most hated by le­gions of BJP cadre?

“80 परसेंट से ज़यादा मामलों में करोना वायरस के मरीज़ को या तो कोई लक्षण नहीं होते या बहुत मामूली लक्षण होते हैं। ऐसे लोगों को अस्पताल में भरती होने की बिल्कुल ज़रुरत नहीं है। आप अपने घर में रह के अपनी देखभाल कर सकते हैं। घर में रह के क्या क्या करना है, क्या क्या एहतिआत बरतनी हैं, इसके लिए हम ने यह वीडियो बनाया है” (80 per cent se za­yada mam­lon mein corona virus ke pa­tient ko ya to koyee symp­toms nahi hote ya bahut mamooli symp­toms hote hain! Aise lo­gon ko hasp­tal mein bharti hone ki bilkul za­roorat nahi hai. Aap apne ghar mein reh ke apni dekhb­hal kar sakte hain. Ghar mein reh ke kya kya karna hai, kya kya ehtiyat bartni hain, is ke liye hum ne yeh video ba­naya hai),”

Ke­jri­wal tells peo­ple sev­eral times in the course of a day in an ad­ver­tise­ment paid for by the peo­ple. He tells them not to go to the hos­pi­tal. His min­is­ters are raid­ing labs test­ing asymp­to­matic pa­tients. His al­leged bête noire, the BJP gov­ern­ment at the Cen­tre, has stopped at­tack­ing him for ask­ing sus­pected pa­tients of Covid-19 not to get them­selves tested. So, 80 per cent pa­tients are be­ing told not to get them­selves tested, and you are asked to be­lieve the gov­ern­ment data of daily cases and to­tal cases. Or deaths in a day.

The lock­down wah-wah April 24 by VK Paul

Mind you, that you will be con­sid­ered dead due to Covid-19 if the virus is the pri­mary cause of your death. If you have a heart at­tack and doc­tors find you Covid-19 pos­i­tive, and you have to wait for your an­gio­plasty and your con­di­tion wors­ens and you die, the data will show that the pri­mary rea­son of your death was coro­nary heart fail­ure and the sec­ondary rea­son was Covid-19. You will not fig­ure in the data of peo­ple dy­ing due to the virus. So much for data sanc­tity.

So far, the only con­sis­tent pat­tern is the phrase HIGH­EST RECORD SPIKE IN A DAY that you read about every sin­gle day in the news­pa­per. Stop test­ing, stay home, close the door and do not get tested. Be a good cit­i­zen. Do not get counted in the corona-struck data, and we will soon have ZERO CASE OF CORONA in In­dia. We can even reach this fig­ure by Au­gust 15. Just do not visit a cre­ma­tion ground or a bur­ial site. Oth­er­wise, you will get a vac­cine of Shamshan – Kabris­tan dose. We in­vented it a long time ago.

बस एक बात का ख्याल रखना – घबराना नहीं है। This was Ke­jri­wal, wrap­ping up his video. Hope you are not wor­ried. अब तो राम लल्ला का मन्दिर भी बन रहा है, और केजरीवाल ने उस पर कोई हील-हुज्जत भी नहीं की। That old blue Wagon R has long been sold, and he does not plan to go check the state of de­vel­op­ment and health­care fa­cil­i­ties in Gu­jarat, or Varanasi for that mat­ter. The Cen­tre is now co­op­er­at­ing so much with AAP gov­ern­ment. “हम को लोगों ने दिल्ली वासियों की सेवा के लिए चुना है।” And we will seal the city lest peo­ple from other states want to ap­proach AI­IMS, Ganga Ram or other hos­pi­tals. And why are you not at home, by the way?

The au­thor is a Chandi­garh-based se­nior jour­nal­ist, colum­nist and tele­vi­sion an­chor, with in­ter­ests span­ning pol­i­tics, aca­d­e­mics, arts, and yes, even trivia.