Even as coronavirus cases in India surged past the one-million mark, another key metric is showing a surprising downward trend. On Monday, ...
Even as coronavirus cases in India surged past the one-million mark, another key metric is showing a surprising downward trend. On Monday, India’s case fatality ratio – the proportion of deaths to Covid-19 cases – dipped below 2.5%. At 2.49%, India’s CFR is significantly below the global average of 4.2%. It is also lower than the corresponding figure for the United States (3.88%) and Brazil (3.81%), the only two other countries in the world to have a higher coronavirus caseload than India.
Taken at face value, this might point to some conditions that, luckily, favour India. Speaking toThe Hindu, virologist Dr Shahid Jameel points to India’s young population as well as the possibility that South Asians have higher innate immunity than Western populations due to possible factors such as exposure to other infections.
A history of bad data
However, at the moment, these are only theories: experts caution that we are still to know the exact medical reason for this low CFR is (if there is one at all). And, as a result, India’s policies cannot be based on it.
To add to this, before simply accepting these fatality numbers in the first place, a number of factors engender caution. For one, even in normal times, data collection on mortality is abysmal in...
