Virus, what virus? India gets back to work

SINNAR, India - India is on course to top the world in coronavirus cases, but from Maharashtra's whirring factories to Kolkata's thronging markets, people are back at work -- and eager to forget the pandemic for festival season.

After a strict lockdown in March that left millions on the brink of starvation, the government and people of the world's second-most populous country decided life must go on.

Sonali Dange, for instance, has two young daughters and an elderly mother-in-law to look after. She was hospitalized this year in excruciating pain after catching the coronavirus.

But after the lockdown exhausted the family's savings, the 29-year-old had to return to work at a factory where she earns 25,000 rupees ($340) a month.

"Now that I have recovered, I am no longer so scared of the disease," she told AFP amid the din of machinery at the Nobel Hygiene plant east of Mumbai.

WORST SINCE 1947

The pandemic's confirmed fatality rate has been heaviest in richer nations with older populations -- the US death toll is double that of India despite having only a quarter of the population.

Poor countries have suffered far worse economic pain, with the World Bank predicting 150 million people could fall into extreme poverty worldwide.

Many children in the developing world are now working to help their parents make ends meet, activists say, while thousands of young girls have been forced into marriage.

In Varanasi in northern India, 12-year-old Sanchit no longer attends school and instead collects cloth discarded from bodies before cremation on the city's ghats.

"On a good day, I earn around 50 rupees (70 US cents)," the boy told AFP.

The IMF projects India's GDP will contract by 10.3 percent this year, the biggest slump of any major emerging nation and its worst since independence in 1947.

LOCKDOWN CATASTROPHE

When India went into lockdown, it was a human catastrophe, leaving millions in the informal economy jobless, penniless and destitute almost overnight. 

No one wants to go back to that, said Gargi Mukherjee, 42, as she shopped in the New Market area of Kolkata, thronging with festival-season customers, many without face masks.

"For survival, people have to come out and do their jobs. If you don't earn, you cannot feed your family," she told AFP.

Experts caution that the October-November season -- when Hindus celebrate major festivals such as Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali -- may trigger a sharp increase in infections, as consumers crowd markets to snap up big-ticket items on discount. 

"Of course corona is to be feared. But what can I do? I can't miss the moments of Durga Puja," said housewife Tiyas Bhattacharya Das, 25.

"Durga Puja comes once in the year, so I cannot miss the enjoyment of the shopping."

HUNGER OR VIRUS

Sunil Kumar Sinha, a principal economist at the Mumbai-based India Ratings and Research agency, said Indians faced a stark choice.

"People have to choose whether to die of hunger or risk getting a virus that may or may not kill you," he told AFP.

Indeed India's relatively low mortality rate -- about 1.5 percent of its more than seven million cases -- has surprised many who warned coronavirus would lay waste to its crowded cities, beset by poor sanitation and crumbling public hospitals.

Even accounting for some likely undercounting, it is evident that the nightmare scenario of dead bodies piled in the streets as seen during the 1918 flu pandemic has mercifully not materialized.

'FOOT OFF THE BRAKE'

The unexpected reprieve has given Prime Minister Narendra Modi leeway to resist a fresh lockdown, with the human toll -- and political cost -- of another shutdown higher than seeing case numbers soar.

But Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, warned the government should not simply let the virus run its course.

"In order to open up, you need to intensify public health measures... If you completely take your foot off the brakes, the virus will take off too," Mukherjee told AFP.

Last month, the Indian Medical Association slammed the Modi government for its "indifference" to the sacrifices of front-line staff in one of the world's worst-funded health care systems.

"It appears that they are dispensable," it said.

Back in Kolkata, bookseller Prem Prakash, 67, was philosophical.

"You have to leave some things to fate," he told AFP.

"Fearing death too much is not a solution. When that comes, you should accept it gracefully."

Agence France-Presse

India virus cases hit 1.5 million, but slum study casts doubt on official data

NEW DELHI - Coronavirus infections in India passed 1.5 million and deaths neared 35,000 on Wednesday, but test results in Mumbai cast further doubt on official data in the world's second-most populous nation.

Even as case numbers soar and more areas impose lockdowns, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said this week India was in a "better position that other countries," and winning international praise.

The health ministry website -- which no longer includes total infections as the government puts more emphasis on recoveries -- on Wednesday reported almost 50,000 new infections and 768 more deaths.

The South Asian giant, home to some of the world's most crowded cities and where health-care spending per capita is among the world's lowest, passed 1 million cases only 12 days earlier.

But many experts have said India is not testing enough people, and that many coronavirus-linked deaths are not being recorded as such.

A study released Tuesday that tested for coronavirus antibodies reported some 57 percent of people in Mumbai's teeming slums have had the infection -- far more than official data suggests.

The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research's Ullas S. Kolthur, who was involved in carrying out the survey, said he was surprised by the results.

"At least in the slums, we think it is largely because social distancing wouldn't work simply because of the population density," Kolthur told AFP.

Last week, a similar study indicated that almost a quarter of people in the capital, New Delhi, have had the virus -- almost 40 times the official total.

There are, however, also doubts about the accuracy of such tests, since other coronaviruses -- not just the novel COVID-19 -- may also produce antibodies that could give a false positive result. 

The Mumbai survey also covered a relatively small sample of around 7,000 people.

India now has the third-highest number of cases in the world behind the United States and Brazil, although the official number of deaths in the South Asian nation is far lower.

As a proportion of its population, India also lags behind, with only 1,110 cases per million population compared to 13,148 for the United States, according to an AFP tally.

Agence France-Presse

India's coronavirus cases cross 600,000 amid easing of lockdowns

MUMBAI/GUWAHATI - India's coronavirus infections surpassed 600,000 on Thursday, with 17,834 deaths, as authorities battled to contain the pandemic while easing lockdown rules, officials and the health ministry said.

Fresh challenges to protect people from the virus emerged for disaster management officials in the northeast state of Assam amid torrential rainfall, where floods and landslides killed 57 people this week and more than 1.5 million were forced to flee their homes.

Assam's health minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, said the state had started testing aggressively to identify coronavirus cases among villagers forced to take shelter in community halls, schools and government buildings.

"We were isolating new coronavirus hotspots; the situation is very critical," Sarma told Reuters.

The increase in infections presents a severe challenge for India's strained medical capacity and overburdened health system. The fear of being quarantined in poorly maintained government facilities has discouraged people from getting tested, experts say, leading to fresh cases of COVID-19 even after the government imposed the world's longest lockdown.

An easing phase called "Unlock 2" was announced on Monday, allowing more economic activities to resume.

But the western state of Maharashtra reported a record jump of 5,537 coronavirus infections on Wednesday, prompting authorities to again impose a stringent lockdown in areas around the financial capital, Mumbai, forcing people to stop commuting in a city largely dependent on public transport.

The state accounts for more than a fifth of total infections in the country and nearly half of the deaths, has reported total to 180,297 infections including 8,052 deaths so far.

(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.)

(Writing by Rupam Jain, Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Gerry Doyle)

-reuters-