Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases

Boris Johnson cancels India trip amid rising cases(bbc.com)

40 points by jangid 5 years ago | 58 comments

tim333 5 years ago |

It's surprising how much worse the covid situation has recently got in India. If you look at the cases graph https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?

GVIrish 5 years ago | |

One word: variant. Variant B1617 has emerged and India and seems like it could be driving a surge.

There's not a lot of data yet on that variant's transmissibility and lethality but it has already been detected in the UK.

Thus far it doesn't seem to be as dangerous as the Brazilian P1 variant, but could be trouble just the same.

sir-alien 5 years ago | | |

Although the variant is in the U.K it's not yet believed to have come from overseas travel. So maybe this is a variant that has a higher likelihood of mutation in a specific demographic (e.g. Indian).

Speculation at this point to be honest.

overcast 5 years ago | |

I don't think it's surprising to anyone that a country with a massive population, poor infrastructure, and greatly divided haves and have nots, are having a bad time. I'd be amazed if this is even 25% of the actual cases reported.

BurningFrog 5 years ago | | |

The change from January to March is what's surprising.

HDMI_Cable 5 years ago | | |

25% seems to low even. I've been to India a few times and the vast majority of people don't use the public health system (it's very bad) and prefer to die at home. I wouldn't be surprised if deaths were much higher and corrupt officials in private hospitals were downplaying the amount of cases.

m0llusk 5 years ago | |

There are almost certainly multiple factors involved. One thing to keep in mind is that the seasonal nature of coronavirus near the equator is very different from farther north with a double hump at the start and end of summer being the usual. It is possible that whatever people are doing and whatever mutations have occurred that some natural factor that we do not understand is contributing.

cblconfederate 5 years ago | |

could be the new variants? Or changes in the weather/humidity, what is usually happening during these months in india?

sn41 5 years ago | | |

Beginning of the summer months.

bongoman37 5 years ago | |

2 major festivals, Holi and Kumbh Mela (attended by over 2m people with no social distancing or anything), massive election rallies in multiple states. Poor vaccination drive. A double mutant variant of the virus that seems to be faster spreading. Medical system collapsing, almost everything that could go wrong is going wrong.

sumanthvepa 5 years ago | | |

I live in India. Just got my first dose (Covishield -- which is the AstraZeneca derived vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute). The process was really smooth. Just went to the website, (I could have used the AarogySetup COVID app, but preferred not install it,) was given an appointment date. Turned up on the appointment date, stood in line (a longish line -- a 3 hour wait) and got my vaccine. Was made to wait for 30 mins post vaccination to check for anaphylactic shock then then sent home with a couple of fever pills (paracetamol I think). Was contacted two days later by a robocaller to get my feedback and the vaccine certificate was available for download immediately. The process was REALLY smooth. The thing is, its easy to sit in a tiny country like the UK and say the vaccination program is going well, India is vaccinating at rates similar to the rest of the world 3-4 million per day. But India is so huge that, at that rate it will take several years to vaccinate everybody. Harsh lockdowns sadly are even worse for poor people. They literally caused more deaths in the early days due to starvation (from not having the money to buy food) than the virus itself. It is complex to manage a vast and complex country like India. So glib, short comments on social media sites make good reading but are not reflective of the actual effectiveness of the government in power. And I say this as an ardent critic of the current Modi administration.

jangid 5 years ago | | |

We cannot generalize here. Holi is mostly a north-Indian festival. Kumbh is for all; so there we can say that it affects everyone. But this year very few people traveled.

Also when we say "Medical systems collapsing" then we should be specific. Because there are 700+ districts and there is a different story everywhere.

My father and mother went to the community clinic at a walking distance from my house and there was no queue at all. No wait. Now on 1st of May, it is my and my wife's turn.

ta51 5 years ago | | |

- Why single out Holi and Kumbh, where there are large gatherings like political Farmers' protests, Ramadan and other religious gatherings are still going on, while the Kumbh (where entry into the district was with RT-PCR negative certificates) & has been called off at the Prime Minister's request.

- The majority of cases come from Maharshtra: 670388, UP:191457, Karnataka:133543, Chattisgargh:128019, Kerala:93683,Delhi:74941 (for a single city state these numbers are high) - which are non-election states. [Source]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103458/india- novel-coronavirus-covid-19-cases-by-state/

- Poor vaccination drive: Nothing can be father from the truth. India is one of the countries which has superb last mile vaccine delivery capability and connectivity till remote villages. Currently vaccination for 45+ age group is being rolled out successfully (with Covishield and Covaxin both). If anything there was lot of anti-vaxx created by media and politically vested interests which resulted in vaccine hesitancy. Now, the same voices are crying hoarse why we cannot vaccinate 1.3 billion people in a single month?

cblconfederate 5 years ago |

Can't the chairs of state start acting like CEOs of their countries rather than like royals who need to fly 200 people just to have a chat? They can talk on zoom, all we need to know is "chairman of india spoke to chairman of uk and the following things changed:"

axiosgunnar 5 years ago | |

What makes you think they don‘t? Actual physical visits are to eg finalze deals, when high-bandwidth communication is necessary. And by high-bandwidth I mean body language, spontaneous n-to-n conversations between all participants, etc.

cblconfederate 5 years ago | | |

i don't think decisions that affect millions should be based on body language

lotsofpulp 5 years ago | |

In person conversations are to preserve plausible deniability, presuming they are not being recorded. I am only going to say things I want a transcript of over electronic mediums. CEOs do the same thing, and it is partly why being located in certain dense cities is so valuable.

Nextgrid 5 years ago | |

Especially considering international travel is still banned by law for any non-essential purposes, and I can't see how a meeting that could be trivially done on Zoom would be classified as essential.

nanna 5 years ago |

When Theresa May visited India in 2016 the conclusion was that Britain was becoming even less relevant to India given that Brexit meant the UK no longer gave India access to EU markets, and because May refused to increase the amount of Indian student visas.* So I'm struggling to see why Johnson would fair any better.

* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198

xmdx 5 years ago |

Really sad what's going on over there.