Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
India's Covid Variant May Be Cause Of Faster Spread
Reuters: Indian Data Hints At Runaway Virus Spread As Daily Deaths Hit Record
Nearly two-thirds of people tested in India have shown exposure to the novel coronavirus, a chain of private laboratories said on Wednesday, indicating a runaway spread of the virus as the daily death toll rose to a record 4,529. India reported 267,334 new daily infections on Wednesday, taking its tally to 25.5 million, with a death toll of 283,248, health ministry data showed. For months, nowhere in the world has been hit harder than India by the pandemic, as a new variant discovered there fuelled a surge of up to more than 400,000 new infections a day. (Mishra and Mehta, 5/19)
The New York Times: India Records The Pandemic’s Highest Daily Death Toll For A Single Country.
Many experts believe the true number of deaths and infections in India, a country of 1.4 billion people, is even higher, and evidence has emerged across the country of large numbers of people dying from Covid who have not been officially counted. (Mashal, 5/19)
NBC News: Covid Variant From India: How Contagious Is The New Variant?
The B.1.617 variant is one of the factors driving the current crisis in India and neighboring Nepal. It may also be linked to recently rising cases among unvaccinated people in the United Kingdom. The variant is believed more contagious than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, but as yet there’s no clear evidence it causes more severe disease or more deaths. The same public health measures — masks and social distancing — can prevent the spread of the virus variant, experts say. And while it might have some impact on the vaccines, its mutations will likely not be enough to weaken protection against serious illness, research suggests. (Syal, 5/18)
Reuters: Indian Variant's Transmissibility Edge Might Be Smaller Than Feared, UK Expert Says
"There's... a glimmer of hope from the recent data that, whilst this variant does still appear to have a significant growth advantage, the magnitude of that advantage seems to have dropped a little bit with the most recent data," Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, told BBC radio. Ferguson, who is member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said that it was tricky to immediately determine by how much how the B.1.617.2 outcompetes the Kent variant, and more data was needed. (5/19)
Reuters: India Unlikely To Resume Sizable COVID-19 Vaccine Exports Until October
India is unlikely to resume major exports of COVID-19 vaccines until at least October as it diverts shots for domestic use, three government sources said, a longer-than-expected delay set to worsen supply shortages from the global COVAX initiative. The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's biggest vaccine maker producing the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccine, responded by saying that it hoped to restart deliveries to COVAX and other countries by the end of this year. (Arora, Das and Jain, 5/18)
In neighbor nations —
The Wall Street Journal: Steep Covid-19 Rise In Nepal Mirrors India’s Surge
With all six ventilators at a hospital in central Nepal already being used by Covid-19 patients on Sunday, doctors asked the son of Lal Bahadur Thakur to try to find one somewhere else, as his father gasped for breath. As India’s Covid-19 surge has swept into Nepal, hospitals are reporting an overwhelming number of severe cases and similar shortages of beds, oxygen and ventilators. Much like what happened in India, cases have risen faster here than during any previous outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, quickly overwhelming a healthcare system with fewer resources than its much larger neighbor to the south. (Pokharel, 5/18)
AP: Singapore Chides Indian Politician For False Virus Claims
Singapore criticized an Indian politician on Wednesday for making unfounded claims on social media that a new COVID-19 variant in Singapore was particularly harmful to children and could cause a fresh surge of infections in India. Singapore’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned India’s high commissioner over the comments made by Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, India’s capital territory. Kejriwal called for a halt in air traffic between the two nations because of the new “Singapore variant.” It was unclear why he made such a call because Singapore has already banned flights from India over the high number of cases there. (5/19)
