In an interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire Dr. Shahid Jameel drew attention to the dramatic increase in both cases and deaths over the last two months. He said the 7-day moving average of cases on September 16 was 93,200. The 7-day average for deaths was 1,160. Two months earlier the 7-day average for cases was 27,000 and for deaths 540. He pointed out that this means that in just two months the case load has increased by 230% whilst deaths have increased by 115%.
Dr. Shahid Jameel predicted to The Wire that India would move from 5 million to 6 million in under 10 days. Asked by The Wire whether his figures meant that the spread of Covid-19 is accelerating in India, Dr. Jameel answered “absolutely”. He said this is “indeed worrisome” and we are seeing a significant escalation in both cases and deaths. Asked by The Wire if one can extrapolate from the ICMR’s serological survey done in May and June, which suggests that for every detected case there are likely to be something between 82 and 130 undetected cases, to conclude that on that basis today, when we have 5 million recorded cases, we are likely to have somewhere between 410 million and 650 million unreported cases, Dr. Jameel said “yes indeed”. He added: “That is what one can extrapolate from this data.” However, Dr. Jaleel pointed out that the real number is likely to be even higher because the outbreak of Covid-19 has expanded considerably since mid-July. He said logically speaking we are probably likely to have somewhere between 700 and 800 million cases (both reported and unreported) today.