Half of India's population will have COVID-19 by end of year: NIMHANS

Medical practitioners at the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS) have now posited that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) case count in India will keep on increasing even after the fourth phase of the nationwide lockdown ends and that about 67 crore Indians, that is, almost half of the country's population, is estimated to be infected with the virus by the end of this year.

The doctors have, however, said that it is likely that about 90% of these infected people would not even know that they are coronavirus-positive since the symptoms do not show up in all the affected patients. Only 5% of the patients in critical condition are admitted to the hospital. If 5% of the 67 crore people in India fell seriously ill, this figure would be around 30 million.

Besides, depending upon the country, the fatality rate of the virus is less than 5%, meaning more than 95% of the patients recover.

This comes as the latest input in a series of discussions among the medical and scientific community in the country regarding when India will witness the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The peak of any infection arrives when the affected cases reach the highest level and then start decreasing. 

While some scientists speculate that India will hit the peak at around the beginning of July, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that COVID-19 cases will start decreasing here in late July. International Rating agency Standard and Poor’s, however, opined that apex of coronavirus will not arrive before September and this would lead to the decline of the Indian economy by as much as 5% next year.

However, the question arises if India is indeed equipped with adequate healthcare measures to tackle the COVID-19 threat. There are only around 1.30 lakh hospital beds available in India for the treatment of coronavirus-affected patients. In the coming days, hospitals will not have beds to admit patients. In fact, several states are already facing this situation, with things being worse in rural India.

As of March 2019, there are only 16,613 primary health centers in rural India, and of these only 6,733 health centers work 24x7.

Notably, 12,760 health centers have only four or more beds available. Rural India faces the crisis of community health centers as there are only 5,335 such centers in the country.

As of May 16, rural districts account for 21% of the total coronavirus cases in India. If we take this into account, about 3.5 crore people will be seriously affected by COVID-19 pandemic, and of these 70 lakh will come from rural India.