Early spread of COVID-19 far greater than initially reported: Study
Houston: There were thousands of undetected early cases of COVID-19 at the beginning of this year, according to a study which found that the disease was far more widespread in Wuhan, China, and Seattle in the US weeks ahead of lockdown measures in each city.
Researchers from The University of Texas (UT) at Austin in the US also concluded that the first case of COVID-19 in Seattle may have arrived as far back as Christmas or New Year's Day.
The study, published in the journal EClinicalMedicine, also found that about a third of the estimated undiagnosed cases in the US were among children.
The researchers extrapolated the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan and Seattle based on retested throat swabs taken from patients who were suffering from influenza-like illnesses during January in Wuhan and during late February and early March in Seattle.
When the samples were analysed later in each city, most turned out to be flu, but some turned out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the researchers said.
"Even before we realized that COVID-19 was spreading, the data imply that there was at least one case of COVID-19 for every two cases of flu," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor at UT Austin.
"Since we knew how widespread flu was at that time, we could reasonably determine the prevalence of COVID-19, '' Meyers said.
When the Chinese government locked down Wuhan on January 22, there were 422 known cases, the researchers said.
However, extrapolating the throat-swab data across the city using a new epidemiological model, Meyers and her team found that there could have been more than 12,000 undetected symptomatic cases of COVID-19.
On March 9, the week when Seattle schools closed due to the virus, researchers estimated that more than 9,000 people with flu-like symptoms had COVID-19 and that about a third of that total were children.
The data do not imply that health authorities were aware of these infections, rather that they may have gone unseen during the early and uncertain stages of the pandemic.
"Given that COVID-19 appears to be overwhelmingly mild in children, our high estimate for symptomatic pediatric cases in Seattle suggests that there may have been thousands more mild cases at the time," said Zhanwei Du, a postdoctoral researcher in Meyers' lab and first author on the study.
According to several other studies, about half of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, leading researchers to believe that there may have been thousands more infected people in Wuhan and Seattle before each city's respective lockdown measures went into effect.
"We can go back and piece together the history of this pandemic using a combination of investigative techniques and modeling," Meyers said.
"This helps us understand how the pandemic spread so quickly around the globe and provides insight into what we may see in the coming weeks and months," she said.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
India should create strategic buffers to navigate 'most difficult' energy shock: CEA Nageswaran
New Delhi (PTI): Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Saturday said India needs to create strategic buffers in the face of the "most difficult" energy shock that the country is facing amid the West Asia crisis.
Nageswaran also said the rising prices of fertiliser and petroleum products globally due to the crisis will make it challenging to achieve the 4.3 per cent fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal, while below normal monsoon and pass-through of higher energy prices could lead to "potential inflation spike".
He also said India has employment challenge emanating from AI, and there is a need to ensure that IT sector becomes more competitive and not lose jobs to AI, and instead create jobs that use AI within the IT sector or in other services.
Speaking at the ICPP Growth Conference organised by the Ashoka University, Nageswaran said the current account deficit (CAD) in the current fiscal could rise to over 2 per cent of GDP, from less than 1 per cent in FY'26.
"The ... priority for us is to create strategic buffers. This energy shock is the most difficult one compared to any other previous energy shock in terms of energy lost as a percentage of total global energy supply, not just oil, including gas.
"And we also need to use this occasion to think about other areas where we are vulnerable in terms of import dependence, nickel, tin, and copper. We need to build strategic buffers if we have to make a shot at manufacturing and becoming indispensable," Nageswaran said.
Since the beginning of the war in West Asia on February 28, crude oil prices soared to a four-year high of USD 126 per barrel on Thursday, from about USD 73 level before the war.
Stating that geopolitics will compel policymakers to be nimble and flexible and shed old model of thinking, Nageswaran said India is better prepared than many other countries to deal with the crisis because of the fiscal leeway that the country has due to lowering of fiscal deficit ratio to 4.4 per cent of GDP in FY'26.
Nageswaran said the West Asia conflict is more of a price shock than supply shock for India as the government is managing the supply side deftly.
"This particular conflict, which is going to be on a low simmer or a high flame situation, whatever it is, it is going to be there with us in some form or the other because the military conflict may be over, but the strategic conflict is well and truly alive. It will be so for some time," Nageswaran said.
He said the conflict has four channels of shock: price and supply shock, trade impact, sticky logistics costs and remittance shock.
India imports 60 per cent of its LPG usage and of that, 90 per cent flows through the now closed Strait of Hormuz.
Nageswaran said the pass-through of high global energy prices would have to be a "balancing act". He said some pass-through is already happening in commercial LPG, and the levy of export duty on diesel and ATF.
The government has cut excise duty on petrol and diesel to shield customers from the impact of the rise in petroleum prices. "We are coming around to arriving at a certain modus vivendi with respect to burden-sharing between the fiscal policy side, inflation, households and the oil marketing companies. So it has to be a balancing act," Nageswaran said.
