TS’ high recovery rate may facilitate lockdown exit

M Sai Gopal   Hyderabad  27.04.2020

The steady improvement in recovery of Covid-19 patients in Telangana could be the key to unlock the challenge of safely exiting the lockdown in the coming weeks by flattening the epidemic curve.

So far, of the 990 coronavirus cases in the State, 307 persons i.e. 31 per cent have recovered. Of the 658 active patients, barring a few, a majority are expected to get discharged in the coming days. In Andhra Pradesh, out of the 1,097 cases, nearly 231 i.e. 21 per cent have recovered. In terms of containing the outbreak, the steady rate of active cases and improvement in recovery rates could potentially augur well for Telangana.

Senior Fellow from Brookings Institute, the US, and former member of PM’s Economic Advisory Council Prof Shamika Ravi, who has been charting the course of Covid-19 in India through predictive models on Twitter, said at present, Telangana was ‘improving recovery rate’ of virus patients.

In the backdrop of AP conducting a large number of tests, Prof Shamika Ravi, who is also a visiting professor to the Indian School of Business, said on Twitter that ‘It is not just new cases, AP is showing far fewer recoveries, so the number of active cases are still growing there. While TS is showing signs, though very early, of reducing active cases i.e. flattening the curve. So, its containment, contact tracing and testing’. In the analysis, the researcher placed Tamil Nadu, TS and Karnataka in the Improving Recovery category while describing the situation in Maharashtra, AP, Gujarat, West Bengal and UP as ‘Worrying’. Comparing a five-day average of new cases, she said the divergence between TS and AP had continued and tweeted, ‘TS looks better, AP worsens’.

The State health authorities, while being cautious, said the fluctuating number of cases indicated that there was no exponential growth of Covid-19 in the State. “A majority of the cases have come from GHMC areas, Suryapet, Vikarabad and Gadwal. Our focus continues to remain on containment and treatment of positive patients,” they said.