Maharashtra’s Health Minister Rajesh Tope last week expressed concern about the state’s rapidly depleting Covid-19 vaccine stocks. Soon aft...
Maharashtra’s Health Minister Rajesh Tope last week expressed concern about the state’s rapidly depleting Covid-19 vaccine stocks. Soon after, the Union Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, claimed that this was a “deplorable attempt to distract attention from state’s failures and spread panic among people”. Harsh Vardhan said that the Maharashtra government had displayed a “lackadaisical attitude” that had ”singularly bogged down the entire country’s efforts to fight the virus”.
Discussions on television have contributed to this perception about Opposition-ruled Maharashtra’s Covid-19 efforts, polarising public opionion. Unfortunately, these debates have foregrounded politics and ignored the science of public health.
It is obvious from the numbers that Maharashtra has been one of the worst-affected states in the country. With 5,67,097 active cases as on April 12, the state has the highest number of cases in the country. But absolute numbers do paint a fair picture – one cannot compare apples and oranges. If comparable denominators are used to calculate the scale of the pandemic, the story is different.
As of April 9, Maharashtra stood seventh in the total number of cases per million population (25,929), after Delhi (42,085), Goa (41,986), Ladakh (38,715), Puduchery (34,829), Kerala (34,545) and Chandigarh (28,370). It also stood fifth in the number of deaths per million...
