In the arcade game Whac-a-Mole, players have to use mallets or hammers to hit toy moles, which appear at random and at different times, before retreating back into their holes.
If you’ve ever played this game, you’d know that in addition to raising your blood pressure, it teaches you that for certain issues, any attempts to solve it would only result in a minor or temporary improvement and that the task is ultimately futile.
The coronavirus is a bit like the Whac-a-Mole of the virus world: when you managed to kill it in one country, it pops up in another and then repeats the process countless times.
When the disease first emerged, China was the worst hit and India barely had any cases, but now, China’s doing much better, and India’s infections are rising at an alarming rate.
Antibody Tests & Survey Show That 1 in 4 People in India’s Capital Could’ve Contracted COVID-19
An antibody study conducted on 15,000 residents in the Indian city of New Delhi shows that more than a quarter of its 20 million residents may have contracted Covid-19.
Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain said on Thursday (20 Aug) that 29.1% of the residents tested had virus antibodies.
At the moment, the official tally for the city is 156,139 infections, but if the results of the antibody study are accurate, it means the actual number could be around 5.8 million.
Similar studies in other Indian cities have also suggested infections may be more widespread than suspected:
- 51.5% of respondents in five hotspots in Pune had antibodies in their blood
- 57% of respondents in Mumbai were found to have antibodies too
These figures suggest the actual number of infections may be more than the official numbers indicate, but how much can we really extrapolate from antibody tests?
Antibody Tests Should Be Treated With Caution
For the uninitiated, antibodies are blood proteins that your body creates to inactivate or destroy a virus that invades your beautiful body.
So, if we encounter the same virus in the future, the immune system “remembers” that previous exposure and can mount a defence.
This means that if you’re found to have antibodies in your system, you were likely infected with Covid-19 in the past.
The only problem is that antibody tests are not as trustworthy as diagnostic tests, which detect active infections.
Moreover, some scientists say antibody tests should be treated with caution because it could detect other coronaviruses, not just Covid-19.
And while it may suggest that certain areas in a city may have more infections than the official numbers say, the results can’t always be applied to the whole city.
Record Daily Jump in Cases
On Thursday, India reported a record 69,652 new coronavirus infections, taking the country’s tally to 2.84 million.
It’s now the country with the third-highest infections, behind Brazil and the US.
While they have a relatively low death rate – which experts attribute to their young population – some say the country is yet to hit its peak.
This is because the authorities have to deal with several outbreaks across a nation of 1.3 billion people.
“A country of India’s size and diversity has multiple epidemics in different phases,” said Rajib Dasgupta, head of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
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