India : Vilified by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party for its high COVID-19 cases, Kerala’s apparent poor record may actually hold crucial lessons for the country in containing the outbreak as authorities brace for a possible third wave of infections.
The opposition-ruled, densely populated southern state is currently reporting the most number of coronavirus cases in the country and accounts for the second-highest national tally – unflattering headline numbers that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has seized upon as a reflection of bungled local leadership.
It shows the state’s containment measures have helped to catch infections early, allowing authorities to better manage the illness and dramatically lower the death rate – a stark contrast to people dying in carparks and outside hospitals for lack of oxygen and beds in big cities like Delhi at the height of the health crisis a few months earlier.
“While the federal government may have its views on rapid antigen tests, it is important to consider that the state’s strategies have by and large succeeded in not just keeping mortality low but also in being able to detect one in six cases compared to one in 33 nationally,” said Rajib Dasgupta, head of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The efficient detection rate and its population density at more than twice the national average explain the high number of cases in Kerala.
All the same, at 0.5%, Kerala still has the lowest fatality rate among all but one thinly populated state. The national figure is 1.4% and it is 1.3% for the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.
SWI
