[Chetan_Rao]

Lost in all the mumbo-jumbo, it's impossible to determine presence or absence of community transmission in India at this moment, if two critical factors are seen together: asymptomatic rates (upto 70-80% based on some countries who did test large samples of population) and that we aren't testing asymptomatic people to a scale required to establish any sort of baseline data to draw conclusions from.

'No evidence of community transmission' because we haven't gotten around to collecting any evidence yet, not because it doesn't exist.

[vibbs]

Originally Posted by sandsun7

Clarification: No signs of community transmission in Kerala yet, says minister Shailaja.
She, however, warned that it cannot be said that the stage would never occur in the state"

https://english.manoramaonline.com/n...-shailaja.html

I think no one wants to stick their neck out and say things as they see for the fear of setting out a panic. Even the so called transparent Kerala government.

Plus I dont know where people get this information that second wave of infections happened in Singapore after the lockdown was lifted?

She, however, warned that it cannot be said that the stage would never occur in the state. She cited the situation in Singapore where more than 15,000 COVID cases where reported between March and April after the lockdown was lifted...

There was no lockdown to begin with in Singapore. The first attempt to get a sort of lockdown working was the circuit breaker which came in place on April 7th. Before that it was only a requirement to let people who can work from home, do that. This was never relaxed.

The circuit breaker itself was supposed to end on May 4th, but then on 21st April (2 weeks before it was supposed to end), it was extended till June 1st.

I dont know where they get their news from and what lockdown they are talking about! Even in circuit breaker all Public transport is running! If I shoot a timelapse of my daily morning run, you will understand what I mean.

This is not a criticism of any one government's actions. I understand different places have different measures depending on their particular challenges.

But news reporting should be factual and not twisting the facts to support your narrative!

[msdivy]

Wuhan completes full circle - Wuhan becomes coronavirus-free as last patient discharged
Link: https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world...al/ar-BB13dM1E

[GeneralJazz]

This news has been going around now: "Massive 145% profiteering exposed in coronavirus rapid test kits sold to ICMR"

Link 1, Link 2.

The test kits were bought by the importer, Matrix, for Rs 245 apiece from China. Yet, the distributors, Real Metabolics and Aark Pharmaceuticals, sold the same kits to the government for Rs 600 each, which means a 60 per cent mark-up.

The court, while hearing the dispute, found that the mark-up was "on the higher side" and directed that the price of the kits be reduced to Rs 400 per kit.

[msdivy]

USA hits 1 million total cases!

[Miyata]

Originally Posted by msdivy

USA hits 1 million total cases

News is that many drugs are on trial - drug repurposing. One such appears to be a heart-burn med.

In all this, there's been news that Trump suggested that healthcare workers are stealing masks and they are to blame for the shortages!

[Behemoth]

Further to my earlier analysis, here is the latest update and there is some positive development that the disease is finally showing some signs of slowing down now. The daily growth factor (Global) now is around 1.02 and the Death rate after having touched a peak of 7% on 23rd April is also going lower now.



We may have crossed the global peak, but at this stage it may be early to jump to conclusions. At this point the developed countries like US and Europe may have crossed their peaks, but the spread is still sustained in countries like Russia, India and Brazil. India is now 15th in the list in terms of number of total cases and has been rising steadily. Incidentally the world crossed 3 million cases and the US crossed 1 million cases today.



(Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries)

While people may say that warmer climates will slow down this virus, but as this is a global virus, as winter hits the countries in the Southern Hemisphere the virus may continue to spread in those countries and eventually may come back to the Northern hemisphere when winter returns here. So the final solution to this Pandemic will only be a cure or a vaccine.
Let's hope for the best and pray that more lives are not lost as a direct result or indirect result of this pandemic.

[AZT]

Considering most people never fact check anything they forward, one small benefit here is we will start seeing less fake news and misinformation on WhatsApp. Doctored twitter screenshots seem to be the new rage

WhatsApp sees 70% drop in 'highly forwarded messages' after imposing limits

WhatsApp witnessed a huge drop in its viral message forwarding message feature after the Facebook-owned social messaging application imposed restrictions on the number of times a user could forward the same message to others.

WhatsApp said that after imposing limits, there was a drop of 70% in the 'highly forwarded messages' criteria globally. The decision to limit the flow of forwarded messages among users comes in order to curb the spread of viral and fake messages across its platform, especially during the time when the most parts of the world is under lockdown due to the novel coronaviurs outbreak.

Read more: https://www.livemint.com/technology/...992797421.html

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by msdivy

USA hits 1 million total cases

"Deaths per million population" is the more significant number. In "deaths per million" US is still below Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden apart from the badly affected Spain/Italy/UK.

And if you had dug a little deeper you would have found NY + NJ constitute 42% of total cases in US. Top 6 states constitute 60% of cases.

US is a huge country and absolute numbers make little sense.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Sorry to burst your Trump-bashing bubble, but "deaths per million population" is the more significant number.
...
US is a huge country and absolute numbers make little sense.

Every death statistic counts. No matter how one views it. At least the officials in other countries, including the ones you mentioned aren't saying they did a great job in spite of the deaths (wrt deaths per million or any other means).

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

At least the officials in other countries, including the ones you mentioned aren't saying they did a great job in spite of the deaths (wrt deaths per million or any other means)

Whether Trump is still capable to lead is for the US public to decide; they have an opportunity to do so in just six months. I have no say in that.

I just put out an opinion : "Number of infections" is not a measure to judge a country or its leaders' effectiveness. High infections also indicates high testing, which is good.

[RavSam]

I didn't hear about updates on ventilators since past few weeks and then I saw this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz2gyhto-iI

[volkman10]

After 5 Weeks of strict level four lockdown measures, NEW ZEALAND 'eliminated' Covid-19.

But the country isn't celebrating yet.

Over the past few days, newly diagnosed infections have been in the single digits. And on Monday, New Zealand reported just one new case.

That does give us confidence that we've achieved our goal of elimination, which never meant zero but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from, adding that there was only one case since April 1 where authorities were still investigating the source of infection.

New Zealand has ramped up its testing, to the point that it can now carry out up to 8,000 tests per day.
To date, New Zealand has carried out 126,066 tests. For comparison, the United Kingdom -- a country with around 13 times more people than New Zealand -- has completed 719,910 tests.
But the real sign that New Zealand's testing is working is its test positivity rate -- the proportion of tests coming back positive.

Link

[kushagra452]

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share an article from the NY Times that talks about a potential vaccine being developed at the Jenner Institute, Oxford University. The initial test in monkeys has been encouraging and phase one clinical trials (sample size 1100) has started last week. The second and third phases will be combined (sample size 5000) and are likely to commence end of May.

If all goes well, we can have a vaccine ready for commercial production as early as September!

I wish the team of scientists at the Jenner Institute all the best.

Link to the NY times article is given below.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/w...te-oxford.html

[Latheesh]

^^
Related video

https://youtu.be/SI4i_LXwfaM