Coronavirus crisis: Efforts need firming up

The coronavirus scenario in some states in India seems to be getting increasingly alarming. In Chennai for instance, COVID-19 patients getting re-infected after cure and discharge has become a new worry.

At least 10 people, who were discharged after testing negative, have returned to hospitals in the morning with symptoms and were found to be infected again, they said.

Tamil Nadu’s number of fatalities from the pandemic have crossed the 8,000 mark.

The Health Department said 87 more people died due to the disease on Tuesday.

Chennai alone has a death toll of 2,896. The city has recorded 1,43,602 cases.

The overall figures in the country are frightening. India edged closer to recording nearly 100,000 coronavirus cases in 24 hours as it ordered retesting of many people whose first results were from the less reliable rapid antigen tests being widely used.
There were a total of 96,551 confirmed cases, taking the tally to over 4.56 million.

The Health Ministry on Friday also reported another 1,209 deaths for a total of 76,271.
India has the second-highest caseload behind the United States, where more than 6.39 million people have been confirmed as infected.

The Health Ministry has asked states to allow testing on demand without a doctor’s prescription. It also said some negative rapid antigen tests should be redone through the more reliable RT-PCR method, the gold standard of coronavirus tests that looks for the genetic code of the virus.

The retesting order applied to people who had negative results but had fever, coughing or breathlessness, or those who developed the COVID-19 symptoms within three days of their negative test results.
The order was meant to ensure that infected people did not go undetected and to help check the spread of the disease among their contacts.

Using the rapid antigen, or viral protein, tests has allowed India to dramatically increase its testing capacity to more than 1.1 million a day, but the quicker, cheaper test is less reliable and retesting is often recommended. The directive came as 60% of the country’s cases have been reported from only five of the country’s 28 states.

However, experts caution that India’s outbreak is entering a more dangerous phase as the virus spreads to smaller towns and villages.
With the economy contracting by a record 23.9% in the April-June quarter leaving millions jobless, the Indian government is continuing with relaxing lockdown restrictions that were imposed in late March.

The overall number of global coronavirus cases has topped the 28 million mark, while the deaths have increased to over 908,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
As of Friday morning, the total number of cases stood at 28,054,396 and the fatalities rose to 908,017, the University’s Centre for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 6,395,904 and 191,753 respectively, according to the CSSE.

Clearly, the efforts need firming up. Perhaps some areas are being overlooked. In a related development, contrary to expectations, hospital cleaners are at the higher risk of getting the Covid-19 infection, compared to intensive care unit (ICU) clinicians, say researchers in the UK.

The study, published in the journal Thorax, revealed that infection risk was highest among cleaners, acute and general medicine clinicians, and those of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

The researchers suggest that the type of personal protective equipment (PPE) worn may be key to these differences, which are likely to be relevant for any second surge in Covid-19 this winter.

“We presumed intensive care workers would be at highest risk... But workers in ICU are relatively well protected compared with other areas,” said study author Alex Richter from the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHBFT) in the UK.