Over the last six months the Covid-19 virus has spread rapidly across the globe, but the US, Brazil and India are the most affected now, with the most number of cases. With over 5 million cases, the US has almost double the number of cases in Brazil and India. But when we compare the growth in new cases over a 10-day period, India clocks the highest growth rate. This raises concerns over whether the government is doing enough to contain the pandemic.
Growth rate
We tried to gauge the pace of growth in new cases in the three countries, with the most number of cases, using 10-day moving average as well as 10-day rolling change.
Growth in new cases in India, over a 10-day period, was more than 300 per cent in April. This has moderated to 29 per cent by August 11. The 10-day rolling change in new cases in US is however much lower at 11 per cent in the US and is at 15 per cent in Brazil in August.
If we compare the 10-day moving average of new cases, the line peaked in the last week of July for US and is moving lower since then. For Brazil, the moving average peaked on August 2. But for India, the line continues to climb higher, signalling risk of cases continuing to rise for some more time. All three countries are adding 5 lakh cases every 10 days or so.
Comparison across other parameters
The silver lining for India is that the recovery rate is quite high, around 70 per cent, when compared to the US, where recovery is much lower, at 52 per cent.
The fatality rate in India, at 1.99 per cent, is also much lower compared to the US and Brazil, which have fatality rate above 3 per cent. The younger demographic profile in our country could be working in our favour, on this score. The spread of the virus is also much lower in India, when viewed against the size of the population. Only 1,656 people per million of population are infected in India whereas in US and the Brazil, the number is 10 times that in India.
If we look at the adequacy of tests, positivity ratio for India, at 11.05, is not too low and compares well with 12.05 in the US. In terms of tests per million, however, India features well below both the US and Brazil.