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COVID-19 Mortality Trends and Reporting
During the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic, Italy had a high infection burden and death rate while India appeared much less affected. By 22 May, Italy and India had 3,770 and 86 infections/million population with mortality rates of 14.24% and 3.03%, respectively. There was speculation about hidden advantages to India leading to a false sense of security. These differences are readily explained by the time and frequency of virus importations and the differences of the age profile of Italy and India.
Has India succeeded in slowing down the SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic and curtailing COVID-19 mortality, compared to European countries? Our government had repeatedly asserted that it took early and appropriate steps to control the epidemic, and used comparisons with European countries to show how India had a far lower infection load and far fewer deaths in comparison to support the claim (Hindu 2020).
Italy is a stark contrast in terms of cumulative infections and deaths, and therefore, we have researched into the striking differences in infection density and mortality between the two countries. We unravel the inherent fallacies in attributing the differences compared to Western countries to better management of the epidemic by India; the differences are probably due to misinterpretation of the numbers without understanding the differences in data collection and analysis.
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