Kerala’s COVID-19 cases may go up to 40000 per day: Biostatistician Bhramar Mukherjee

Data Science experts projected the data of West Bengal and Kerala, two states where Assembly elections were recently held.
COVID-19 patient in PPE suit in a full ward
COVID-19 patient in PPE suit in a full ward
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Kerala may witness 40,000 COVID-19 cases per day in the next seven days, according to the projections by the COV-IND-19 study group, led by Bhramar Mukherjee, professor of epidemiology and chair of the department of biostatistics at the University of Michigan. In West Bengal, meanwhile, the interdisciplinary team of data scientists and scholars projected the COVID-19 cases to be around 26,000 in the next seven days. Bhramar Mukherjee made the COVID-19 projections of West Bengal and Kerala, the two of the states where Assembly elections were held in April.

According to the biostatistician, in the coming days, the test positivity rate for Kerala would be around 18%, which is slightly relaxing, as the present test positivity of the state has been over 22% in the last few days. In West Bengal, the test positivity rate is projected to be 20%. Test positivity rate is the percentage of tests that return positive for the virus. For instance, if samples of 100 people are tested for coronavirus and 22 return positive, the test positivity rate is 22%.

Sharing the data on Twitter, Bhramar Mukherjee said that West Bengal and Kerala have a large number of infections and a high value of R or reproduction number, which denotes the number of individuals who can be infected by one person with the virus on average. An R-value of more than one indicates a rise in infection cases. “My summary: the polls are taking their tolls. Hunker down, stay at home, get vaccinated. Stay safe,” said the data science expert.

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Incidentally, the Kerala Health Department also expects a similar spike in the coming days. A few days ago, Health Minister KK Shailaja had said that the daily number of cases may go up to 50,000. She had also said that the state is equipped to accommodate more patients daily. In a COVID-19 core committee meeting convened by the Health Department also, the officials observed that Kerala would see 50,000 cases per day in the coming days.

On Sunday, 28,469 people in Kerala tested positive for coronavirus. A total of 2,18,893 COVID-19 patients are currently under treatment, while 8,122 patients recovered as of Sunday. A total of 5,110 patients died due to COVID-19 in Kerala so far.

The test positivity rate of the state is 22. 46%. As part of Kerala’s mass testing drive, 1,26,773 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. Among the COVID-19 confirmed cases on Sunday, 338 patients are from other districts, while others were infected through local transmission. Forty-five health care workers were also diagnosed with COVID-19 on Sunday.

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