Thought of the Day - April 23 2021 - India

As we talked about last weekend ( Thought of the Day - April 19 2021 - By the Numbers ), the number of cases and deaths in India is now staggering (yesterday over 3 lakh new cases). With over two million active cases, India has become the epicentre of the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, things like oxygen are in very short supply. Unfortunately, modelling suggests that this current wave in India will not crest until mid-May.

Besides the sheer number of cases, there was also the emergence of what is being called the Indian variant; here in BC we have already seen 39 cases of the strain. And now a new 'triple variant' colloquially being called the 'Bengal strain' has been identified.

Yesterday direct flights between India and Canada were cancelled, although one did land in YVR from Delhi at 7 am this morning.

Surprisingly, flights have also been cancelled from Pakistan, with no real explanation. Cases in Pakistan have not been increasing as of late and there is no special reason to believe Pakistan harbours the variants more than other countries.

And while there are suggestions that cases are under-reported, it should be noted that Pakistan has a much lower positivity rate than India when people do get tested (not much different from that in Canada).

Thus, the logic is a bit of a mystery. There is no reason to believe people from India would choose to route through Pakistan more than other countries. So, either there is information that has not been disclosed, or this was an arbitrary decision to make it seem like Canada was singling out India with this announcement; a bit like when we banned travel to the Caribbean as a whole even though many Caribbean countries had lower rates than Canada at the time.

Any way you look at it the people of India are in for a tough time. Vaccination is a long way off, and not just logistically. Western patents make the broad deployment of Pfizer, Moderna and even AstraZeneca financially unthinkable, poor relations with China mean this is an unlikely source of vaccine, the domestic Bharat Biotech Covaxin is only planning high volume production by the end of the year, and so the main option on the table is the newly approved Sputnik.

Only time will tell how things will go in India, but after a fairly mild first wave in September last year, things are much different now.

Cheers

Cliff