Lahore, 10th July: According to reports, India has surpassed Russia to become the country with the third-highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases.
As per reports, Brazil and the United States take the top positions. With nearly 800,000 cases and 21,595 deaths, the growth in infections in India is still rapid, with total numbers doubling around every three weeks.
And as the chart above shows, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also rising up the rankings, although not as rapidly as their neighbor.
Here a question arises of why South Asian countries have recorded low death rates to cases than other countries with large outbreaks?
Asthma and COVID-19: What to know?
Let’s take the case of India, for instance, ranks third for cases but eighth in the number of deaths. Similar is the case with Pakistan, which ranks 12th for cases and 19th for its number of deaths. So is the case with Bangladesh, 17th, and 27th respectively.
What’s going on? It’s difficult to say.
It is reported that the South Asian countries have the lowest rates of testing, implying a far higher actual case count and a startling low death rate.
According to the Foreign Policy (FP), some videos are emerging from Karnataka, an Indian State, showing workers dumping bodies of COVID-19 patients into burial pits.
Coronavirus patients’ figure remained low: NCOC
It is said that most of the deaths in the region are not medically certified so there are some reporting and verification issues. But even those issues don’t explain South Asia’s low number of deaths so far.
However, if the region is simply straggling behind then given the time it takes to contract and then fall sick from coronavirus, then it may soon see a sharp rise in its accounting.
Then there are concerns about the reopening of the region’s economies. As Kapil Komireddi writes in FP this week about India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi “is now seeking to alleviate the social and economic woe aggravated by his own mismanagement of the lockdown by serving up Indians to the virus.”
COVID-19: India ranks third in the world
Whereas in Pakistan, Zuha Siddiqui, a journalist from FP said, “there are growing signs that control of the government is sliding fast out of [Prime Minister Imran] Khan’s hands,” as the military oversees the bulk of the country’s coronavirus response.
In Pakistan, after the Health Minister Zafar Mirza and the Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi tested positive for the coronavirus, it appears that the disease has spread widely among the PM’s cabinet.
Here is a weekly snapshot of the region’s countries and their total cases over the past four weeks:
Stay tuned to Baaghi TV for more updates!
