Minnows admit, giants refute it
Famous for Africa’s tallest mountain Kilimanjaro and Serengeti National Park, Tanzania has a population of around 5.63 crore out of which just 509 are infected by the coronavirus.
Known for its palm-fringed beaches, Liberia is another African nation with an equally impoverished population of mere 48 lakh — the average age is just around 18 — of which only 311 have tested positive.
Interestingly, both of these countries, like many other nations with minuscule coronavirus outbreak on their soils, have admitted to community transmission — a state in which the disease becomes so widespread that one can’t pinpoint the source of infection, or where the contract-tracing was not possible.
Zoom to India, Russia, and China — the three countries hit hard by the virus. The world has rained obloquy on China over its dubious claim of arresting the growth of coronavirus at around 85,000 cases. Even if that number is accepted as credible, China is placed as the 18 worst affected nation in the world, 12 places behind India (2.3 lakh cases), and 16 ranks behind Russia (2.5 lakh plus cases).
Despite such a huge number of cases, India, China, and Russia are the only three countries among the top 15 affected nations that have denied reaching the community transmission stage.
For its classification of the transmission stage, the World Health Organisation (WHO) relies solely on the reports it receives from respective countries.
Now, let’s go back to Tanzania. The African nation had just 480 positive corona cases on May 1. During the last 33 days till June 3, it added a trickling of 29 cases. Similarly, Liberia had 152 confirmed cases on May 1. In 33 days from then, it added five cases every day to reach a figure of 316 on June 3. Both these countries are bracketed with dozens of nations such as South Africa ( 35,000 cases), Nigeria (10,819 cases) Algeria (9,626 cases), Ghana (8,297 cases) Cameroon (6,585 cases) Guinea (3,886 cases) Senegal (3,836 cases) the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3,325) Côte d’Ivoire (3,024) Gabon (2,803 cases) Kenya (2,093 cases) Mali (1,351 cases), which have admitted to community transmission.
Even in Europe, where the health system is far better than Africa and India, a majority of the countries have admitted to reaching the stage of community transmission.
Some of them are: Belgium (58,615 cases), The Netherlands (46,647 cases), Belarus (44,255 cases), Sweden (38,589 cases), Portugal (32,895 cases), Switzerland (30,791 cases), Ireland (25,066 cases), Ukraine (24,823 cases), Poland (24,395 cases) and Romania (19,517 cases).
The same is the case with Latin America and Middle East where a majority of the nations claim they have reached only the stage of cluster spread of the disease.
In the case of India, which is now reporting 9,000 plus cases every day, it is baffling how the authorities can claim that the country is still away from the community transmission stage when cities like Delhi and Mumbai have started reporting more than 1,000 cases every day.
While authorities are in denial mode, a group of acclaimed epidemiologists, public health practitioners and health experts have said that “community transmission is already well-established across large sections or sub-populations in the country.”
“It is unrealistic to expect that the Covid-19 pandemic can be eliminated at this stage given that community transmission is already well-established across large sections or sub-populations in the country,” they said in a report submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The experts have been claiming for the last two months that India has reached the stage of community transmission. A study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR) said that when 5,911 Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) patients were tested for Covid-19, as many as 104 (1.8%) tested positive. Forty of these confirmed patients, from 36 districts in 15 States, didn’t have any foreign travel history or any contact with a known Covid-19 case. This was the first indication that India may have reached the stage of community transmission.
One can argue that countries like Russia, China, and India have far better health infrastructure than African countries, which are not equipped for contact-tracing of the infected persons. But how does a nation like Afghanistan, which lacks even bare minimal any health infrastructure, or our chaotic neighbour like Pakistan can claim to contact trace every infected person or trace his travel history is baffling, to say the least.
If we put to together China’s dubious claim about the number of coronavirus cases and Russia ridiculously low death figure of 5,540 ( it has been universally hailed as manipulation), and Afghanistan and Pakistan’s outlandish claims of keeping the community transmission stage at bay, there’s a reason to believe that coronavirus data don’t always tell the true story of the level of the outbreak.
While authorities refuse to admit that the contact tracing of so many thousands of infected persons every day was a well-nigh impossible task, the experts are increasingly coming to the conclusion that community transmission was already on in India and weeks ahead could see a massive spike in the number of cases.