The tran­si­tion from Lock­down to Un­lock has been quite a po­lit­i­cal stunt­man­ship in In­dia show­ing no re­spect for the ac­tual pan­demic sit­u­a­tion, the warn­ing of var­i­ous in­ter­na­tional health au­thor­i­ties and mon­i­tor­ing agen­cies. It has now reached its nadir ig­nor­ing the writ­ings on the wall, both in ur­ban and rural In­dia. Delhi Uni­ver­sity teacher and writer Ku­mar San­jay Singh has been shar­ing cau­tion­ary notes through his columns in WSN about the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion, the ris­ing in­ci­dence of daily in­fec­tions and death in In­dia. The sit­u­a­tion to­day has reached its nadir and the au­thor cau­tions against Un­lockIV.

Tim­ing of Un­lockIV, an­nounced on 30 Au­gust and its tranche of mea­sures to ease re­stric­tions, com­menc­ing from 7th Sep­tem­ber 2020 in In­dia could­n’t have been more ill-ad­vised. The an­nounce­ment has been made in the back­drop the gath­er­ing mo­men­tum of the spread of COVID19 in­fec­tions and is thus a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern.

For the past 25 days, In­dia has had the largest num­ber of daily in­fec­tions in­ter­na­tion­ally. It re­placed Brazil to be­come the coun­try with the sec­ond-largest num­ber of ac­tive cases. The num­ber of deaths re­lated to COVID19 has been in ex­cess 7000 deaths per week through the month of Au­gust 2020. On 31st Au­gust In­dia over­took Mex­ico, to be­come the coun­try with the third-high­est num­ber of deaths.

The weekly av­er­age of the num­ber of pos­i­tive cases con­tin­ued to rise through Au­gust and since it takes a fort­night to break a trend; this up­ward trend will per­sist for a good part of Sep­tem­ber. At the cur­rent rate of ac­cel­er­a­tion of daily pos­i­tive cases in In­dia and the rate of de­cel­er­a­tion in Brazil, In­dia is poised to over­take Brazil in the to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive cases. By 5 Sep­tem­ber 2020, In­dia will have largest num­ber of con­firmed cases, sec­ond only to the US.

The in­creas­ing trend of the first phase will con­tinue un­abated for at least the first three weeks of Sep­tem­ber.

Read­ings re­lated to COVID19 in­fec­tions are mov­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion. While the rate of re­cov­ery is tend­ing to plateau out, pos­i­tiv­ity rate is on the rise. Af­ter hov­er­ing around 8, in fact, dip­ping to slightly be­low 8 for about a week in Au­gust, the pos­i­tiv­ity rate is once again on the rise. In the last days of Au­gust, it went above 8.

This will en­sure a ris­ing trend of the weekly av­er­age in­crease in new pos­i­tive cases. This up­ward trend will be sus­tained be­cause the rate of in­fec­tions (the R fac­tor) con­tin­ues to be over one, which sim­ply means that an in­fected in­di­vid­ual is trans­mit­ting COVID19 to more than one per­son.

The in­creas­ing trend of the first phase will con­tinue un­abated for at least the first three weeks of Sep­tem­ber. There is a sub­stan­tial in­crease not only in the east­ern states, that are in­un­dated with flood and rural ar­eas with very weak health ser­vices but also in the met­ros such as Delhi, Ban­galuru and Chen­nai, where the num­ber of daily cases is once again on the rise.

This up­ward trend will be sus­tained be­cause the rate of in­fec­tions (the R fac­tor) con­tin­ues to be over one, which sim­ply means that an in­fected in­di­vid­ual is trans­mit­ting COVID19 to more than one per­son.

It seems that as a con­se­quence of these de­vel­op­ments the gap be­tween the first wave and the sec­ond wave of COVID19 in­fec­tions in In­dia will be squeezed. With mid-Oc­to­ber, the flu sea­son in In­dia com­mences, which is ex­pected to cause the sec­ond wave. If the up­ward move­ment of the weekly av­er­age of new con­firmed cases is not bro­ken by the third week of Sep­tem­ber, I am afraid the first and the sec­ond wave in In­dia will dove­tail.

Ti­tle Photo Cour­tesy: Dainik Ja­gran