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Is India underreporting the coronavirus outbreak? - BBC News

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Any text version of the same news? And what's the date when this news was aired on BBC?

- PRTP GWD
 
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BBC is a pro India outlet. Surprising they would publish this. Indian government has been deliberately under reporting the outbreak since it started.
 
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Don't think they are under reporting, however, they aren't testing like they should.

Even Pakistan has tested less than 500 people per million till now but still we have done almost double number of tests than India.
 
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Don't think they are under reporting, however, they aren't testing like they should.

Even Pakistan has tested less than 500 people per million till now but still we have done almost double number of tests than India.
I disagree, even today they deny that community spread is occurring. There was a Zika outbreak in India a few years ago that the Modi government deliberately hid the first cases of from the public and WHO.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40081524
 
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Limited tests,Cow urine party, effigy burning , banging tin containers, candle light twilight, and last but not the least
Chanting Coronavirus To Go Away

all of the above is a HOGWASH for the world...

INDIA HAS TO DO HERD IMMUNITY..

IT HAS NO OTHER CHOICE..
 
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I have been raising these fears from day one. You got a hindu terrorist regime high on "shuppa pawaa" delusion, hiding the true extent of infection in India, playing petty geopolitics over this disease initially when they for optics extracted Indian students from wuhan, now endup with one of those student have a new strain of virus unique to India!

This slum of country, a mob masquerading as nation , currently ruled by hindu terrorists has got all characteristics to be a long term virus incubation laboratory, a disaster for world, and region in particular.
 
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Each state reports on their own. A lot of states don't like the central government. So significant collusion between them is unlikely.
Any under reporting is of unconfirmed cases. For Eg- I know of a case in west Bengal where a death due to a respiratory cause was marked as a dengue like illness.
A lot of western countries are marking almost all deaths with respiratory causes as due to the coronavirus, which is inaccurate, too.
Kerala has now flattened the curve.
 
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India definitely needs herd immunity because a newly minted and very dangerous "Indian Virus" is on the loose!


Published14 April, 2020
Updated 14 April, 2020
BEIJING — A coronavirus strain isolated in India carried a mutation that could upend vaccine development around the globe, according to researchers from Australia and Taiwan.

The non-peer reviewed study said the change had occurred in part of the spike protein that allows the virus to bind with certain human cells.

This structure targets cells containing ACE2, an enzyme found in the lungs which also allowed the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) virus to infect people.

Scientists know more about this receptor than any other so had been working on antibodies that target it, but an unexpected structural change could render them useless.

The researchers — led by Wei-Lung Wang, from the National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan, and collaborators from Murdoch University in Australia — said this was the first report of a significant mutation that could threaten development of a vaccine for the virus that causes Covid-19.

“The observation of this study raised the alarm that Sars-CoV-2 mutation with varied epitope [something an antibody attaches itself to] profile could arise at any time,” they wrote in a paper released on preprint review site biorxiv.org on Saturday.

“[This] means current vaccine development against Sars-CoV-2 is at great risk of becoming futile.”

Although the strain in question was first sampled by the National Institute of Virology from a patient in Kerala as early as January, the full genome sequence was only released to the international community last month – a delay that raised eyebrows among some researchers.

The patient was said to be a medical student returning from Wuhan, but the strain does not appear to be closely related to any of those identified in the Chinese city and appears to be an outlier compared with variants recorded in other countries.

The researchers found that the mutation occurred in the spike protein’s receptor-binding domain (RBD).

A computer simulation shows that the RBD mutation, which was not found in other variants across the globe, could remove a hydrogen bond from the spike protein.

Without this bond, the virus may be less likely to bind with ACE2, or angiotensin converting enzyme-2, which is found in the lungs and other organs.

Since its first confirmed identification in early January, the virus has reached every continent except for Antarctica with more than 3,500 mutations detected, according to the China National Centre for Bioinformation.

For a long time India appeared to have been spared by the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has now recorded around 9,000 confirmed cases.

The virus’s presence in the country has grown rapidly in recent weeks, with cases being identified in crowded slum areas, and scientists fear the world’s second biggest country could see the next major outbreak – something that threatens a humanitarian disaster.

The international community still knows relatively little about the evolution and spread of the virus due to limited testing and information from the subcontinent.

A researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing who is tracking the mutation of the coronavirus said he was closely monitoring the emerging strains from India.

Some vaccines have already started clinical trials in China and the US, but the RDB mutation could create more uncertainty about the eventual outcome.

The findings of the new study, which was not peer-reviewed, will need further verification. For instance, there was a possibility that the mutation was caused by a technical error during the sequencing process, according to the researcher, who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

He also said the results produced by the computer simulation may be misleading.

“Laboratory experiments will be needed to verify whether the protein changes in real life,” said the researcher.

The unusual behaviour of the coronavirus has kept scientists around the world scratching their heads. For instance, it has infected a large number of patients around the world but the genetic structure of the strain has remained relatively stable.

Some researchers have speculated that it might have been spreading quietly in humans for a long time and evolved to a form that did not require too many changes to adapt to different environments and populations.

But others worry the thousands of strains sampled and sequenced are just the tip of the iceberg – and greater variety increases the risk that new strains will require new vaccines in the same way the flu virus does.

Although China has five different vaccines under development “it is impossible to predict which one is more likely to succeed”, said the researcher. “They could all end in failure.” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
 
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Don't think they are under reporting, however, they aren't testing like they should.

Even Pakistan has tested less than 500 people per million till now but still we have done almost double number of tests than India.
In many states in india there arent many cases (ex:chattisgarh and northeastern ones.).so the overall number seems small.
Delhi is testing above 700 per million.
Rajastan above 400 pm
Kerala 425 pm
Mha above 300 pm
Other states are also catching up.
 
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In many states in india there arent many cases (ex:chattisgarh and northeastern ones.).so the overall number seems small.
Delhi is testing above 700 per million.
Rajastan above 400 pm
Kerala 425 pm
Mha above 300 pm
Other states are also catching up.
You don't test, you don't know how many cases are there. You have huge migration problem between the states.

Countries are testing 5000-10000 per million. Some countries like UAE have tested over 50000 people per million despite having zero migration between states to get the real numbers.

177 (or even 700) tests per million doesn't show the right picture. Same is true for Pakistan.
 
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