Chaos (calamity ?) Of Govt’s Making and What Now?

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Whether PM delayed the lockdown for politics in MP or not is now a small point. The humungous error it did was in not preparing. It did not prepare itself and its agencies neither did it prepare its and populace in general for getting into and staying in lockdown. So PM has become like Abhimanyu of Mahabhrat who bravely went in but did not know how to come out. But there is big difference. Abhimanyu had gone alone, here our PM has taken the whole nation along and now nobody knows hot to get out.
From 30th Jan, when first Covid19 patient was detected it took India 50 days to reach testing of 1000 per day in the population of 135 Cr. We went into lockdown with only handful of Covid19 labs in the area of 33 lakh sq. km. Even after that increase in capacity has been slow. So the nation doesn’t really know where she stands. The day there happens more tests we have large number of daily positives and the day there are fewer tests we have fewer new patients. (see first image - charts of daily numbers). 

Had we been testing adequately then as testing increases exponentially, the proportion of positives detected should have gone down. But instead ratio of positives detected to tests carried out any day has been stable between 4 to 6% since 19th March, since when the data is available (see second image). 

So if tomorrow we do 8 lakh instead of 80000 then there is ground to fear that we will detect 40000 positives instead of today’s 4000. So there is extreme urgency to ramp up testing so that in a short while we will reach a stage where we test 8 lakh in a day and yet find only 4000 or 400 positives, so that eventually we dont need to test so much and we would need only focused testing. 

S, Korea, Australia and New Zealand have achieved this. Australia even has claimed to have eliminated Covid19 (not eradicated).  Lets start with S. Korea as it has population density similar to India (actually more than India) and that more than 88% of positives have recovered there. (see the spreadsheet in the third image). 

So we get a good stable data. S. Korea is close to China and very intense connected with China and the western world. So the kind of control they have got over the epidemic, so early is very exemplary. They started high testing very early February, (see chart in fourth image),  

supported by checks at airports, lockdown, drive-in testing (anybody can go and get tested), quick segregation of positive patients before they pass on to many others. Due to these they could arrest early rise in cases there. So now they are abe to reduce testing and are looking to gradually ease restrictions with keeping infection in control. NZ and Australia started late but raised their testing with super fast speed (see chart in image five) 

so that to cover most of infected and probables in population. They too have managed to get spread in control. Compare these with India’s late start and extremely low level of density and you will understand why, we are in eighth week of nationwide lockdown with path forward in sight. 

Indian government has not been much supportive of her poor people but even if it was very supportive it could not continue this support indefinitely. Lockdown sure needs to loosen gradually. But before that we need to super urgently increase our testing ten folds, twenty folds. Then and only then can we detect most of the patients and isolate them and look to contain the spread. I don’t think there is any other way.

(Views, counter views on these as also if nay errors noticed in what I have written, you are welcome to share)