Is the Real Risk From India Being Detected?
Out of self-interest, the rest of the world better help quickly to understand how a Covid variant is devastating the country.
If you haven’t heard of B.1.617 yet, chances are you soon will.
This particular Covid-19 variant is at least partly behind the overwhelming second wave in India, the current global epicenter of the pandemic. The World Health Organization has now raised B.1.617 from a “variant of interest” to a “variant of concern.” Authorities like Public Health England are already treating it as the latter, meaning there’s something worrying about one or more of the criteria on which a virus is judged — including how fast it transmits, how many it kills, and whether it evades detection or makes vaccines less effective.
The stakes underlying these threat thresholds have risen beyond guessing the true extent of the unfolding disaster in India. Whether daily fatalities and new cases are, as officially reported, around 4,000 and 400,000, respectively, or closer to 25,000 deaths and between 2 million and 5 million infections, as Brown University School of Public Health’s Ashish Jha estimates, the rest of the world needs to help the country combat this menace. Out of pure self-interest.
Out of self-interest, the rest of the world better help quickly to understand how a Covid variant is devastating the country.
If you haven’t heard of B.1.617 yet, chances are you soon will.
This particular Covid-19 variant is at least partly behind the overwhelming second wave in India, the current global epicenter of the pandemic. The World Health Organization has now raised B.1.617 from a “variant of interest” to a “variant of concern.” Authorities like Public Health England are already treating it as the latter, meaning there’s something worrying about one or more of the criteria on which a virus is judged — including how fast it transmits, how many it kills, and whether it evades detection or makes vaccines less effective.
The stakes underlying these threat thresholds have risen beyond guessing the true extent of the unfolding disaster in India. Whether daily fatalities and new cases are, as officially reported, around 4,000 and 400,000, respectively, or closer to 25,000 deaths and between 2 million and 5 million infections, as Brown University School of Public Health’s Ashish Jha estimates, the rest of the world needs to help the country combat this menace. Out of pure self-interest.
