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NEW DELHI: When the coronavirus pandemic took hold in India, there were fears that it would undermine the fragile health system of the second most populous country in the world. Diseases escalated dramatically for months and at one point it seemed that India could overtake the United States as the country with the highest number of taxes.
But diseases began to fall in September, and now the country reports about 11,000 new cases per day, compared to a peak of nearly 100,000, leaving experts worried.
They have proposed many explanations for the sudden fall – which can be seen in almost every area – suggesting that some areas of the country may or may not have reached herd protection. of preexisting protection of Indians from the virus.
The Indian government has also contributed to the decline in cases to mask wear, which is publicly mandatory in India and breaches carry huge taxes in some cities. But experts have noticed that the situation is further complicated by the fact that the decline is similar although mask compliance is evident in some areas.
It’s more than just an interesting puzzle; Determining the cause of the infectious disease could help authorities control the virus in the country, which has reported nearly 11 million cases and more than 155,000 deaths. Approximately 2.4 million people have died worldwide.
“If we don’t know the reason, you could be unaware of doing things that could go up,” Drs. Shahid Jameel, who studies viruses at Ashoka University in India.
India, like other countries, misses many diseases, and there are questions about how it counts virus death. But pressure on the nation’s hospitals has also plummeted in recent weeks, another sign that the spread of the virus is slowing. When cases exceeded 9 million in November, official figures showed that nearly 90 percent of ventilated emergency care beds in New Delhi were full. On Thursday, 16 percent of those beds were there.
Vaccines cannot be attributed to that success since India only started providing sights in January – but as more people get vaccinated, the outlook should look even better, although experts are also concerned about changes identified in many countries that appear to be more contagious. and provide some treatments and vaccines so effectively.
Possible explanations for the fall in cases include that some large areas have reached herd immunity – the threshold at which many people are immune to the virus, by falling ill. or getting vaccinated, the transmission will start to slow down, said Vineeta Bal, who studies immune systems at the National Institute of Psychology of India.
But experts have warned that even though herd protection in some areas is partly dependent on the decline, the population as a whole remains vulnerable – and must continue to take over. care.
This is especially true because new research suggests that people who become ill with one type of the infectious virus may relapse with a new strain. Bal, for example, cited a recent study in Manaus, Brazil, which estimated that more than 75 percent of people there had antibodies to the virus in October – before things resurfaced in January.
“I don’t think anyone has the final answer,” she said.
And, in India, the data is not so dramatic. Nationwide screening for antibodies by Indian health organizations estimated that about 270 million, or one in five Indians, had been infected with the virus before the vaccine began – well below that level. 70 percent or higher experts could be the threshold for the coronavirus virus. , although even that is not certain.
“The message is that a large proportion of the population remains vulnerable,” said Dr. Balram Bhargava, who is the head of India’s leading medical research agency, Medical Examination Council of India.
But the study provided another perspective on why Indian diseases may be declining. It showed that more people were infected in Indian cities than in small towns, and that the virus was moving more slowly through rural areas.
“Rural areas have lower population densities, people work in larger open spaces and homes are much cooler,” said Drs. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Indian Institute of Public Health.
If some urban areas are moving closer to herd protection – no matter where that threshold is – and also restricting transmission through mask and physical distance and thus seeing things fall, it is likely the low speed at which the virus passes through rural India may help to explain. declining numbers, Reddy suggested.
Another possibility is that many Indians are susceptible to a number of diseases throughout their lives – cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis, for example, are common – and this exposure can cause the body to stimulation to produce a stronger immune response to new viruses.
“If the COVID virus can be controlled in the nose and throat, before it reaches the lungs, it will not be as bad. Indigenous immunity works at this level, by trying to reduce the viral infection and stop it getting to the lungs, ”said Jameel, from Ashoka University.

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