Dakshin Kannada to have 1,500 Covid-19 cases per 1 mn people in 4 days: Researchers

An early warning system for surge in Covid cases developed by researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bengaluru, has predicted that Dakshina Kannada district, in the next four days, will have 1,500 cases per million population, and Udupi, in the next eight days will reach 1,500 cases per million population.

Prof Siva Athreya from ISI, a probability theorist specialising in statistical physics and population biology, along with Deepayan Sarkar, ISI, Delhi, and Rajesh Sundaresan, dean of the division of EECS (Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Sciences), IISc, created an early warning system from the daily reported cases, and each district’s healthcare infrastructure capacity.

Explaining the significance of this, Athreya said, “We have assumed that health infrastructure capacity in a district is proportional to its population. Hence, we have used days taken to reach 50 cases per million population and days to 1,500 cases per million population as markers for healthcare infrastructure capacity.”

The system takes into account the peak in a previous Covid wave to give a warning on the district’s healthcare infrastructure’s capacity.

“The number of cases at the previous peak is taken as a critical number of cases in the early warning system. This is just another marker for healthcare infrastructure capacity. The predicted number of days to achieve this is intended to provide an early warning to epidemiologists and district authorities,” he added.

Athreya explained, “To predict active cases at any given time, we average the last four calculated values of ‘relative growth rate’ on that date and then use this average as the growth rate for the prediction. One of the goals is to provide early warning before the cases increase substantially. We have also made a presentation to members of the State Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee on the early warning signals.”

However, data shared by Dr Ashok H, Covid nodal officer for Dakshina Kannada district, showed that in 58 private hospitals as on August 3, out of a total of 5,967 Covid beds, a mere 354 were occupied.

Out of the total private Covid beds in the district, 3,602 are general, 1,854 are equipped with oxygen, 158 have high flow oxygen (HFO) and 176 are beds in intensive care units. As many as 177 beds have ventilators.

Only 134 were occupied among private general beds, 121 in oxygen, 18 in HFO, 30 in ICU, and 51 ventilator beds were occupied. The rest were vacant. As on August 7, the district had 3,294 active
Covid cases.