Is the epidemic finally coming to an end in India

Is the sharp drop in India's coronavirus cases as dramatic and curious as some believe?

Is the epidemic firmly in retreat in a country where many early modellers had predicted millions of deaths due to Covid-19?

In October, I had written extensively on why the epidemic appeared to be slowing down in India. Cases had hit a record peak in the middle of September - there were more than a million active cases. After that daily deaths and caseloads began declining despite consistent testing and some short and fierce spikes of infections in cities like Delhi.

The situation has markedly improved since.

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By the middle of last week, India was barely counting an average of 10,000 Covid cases every day. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths from the disease slid to below 100. More than half of India's states were not reporting any Covid deaths. On Tuesday, Delhi, once an infection hotspot, did not record a single Covid death, for the first time in 10 months.

So far, India has recorded more than 10 million infections - the second-highest in the world after the US. There have been over 150,000 reported deaths from the disease. The number of deaths per million people stands at 112, much lower than what has been reported in Europe or North America. It is also clear that the decline in cases is not because of lower testing.

Most pandemics typically rise and fall in a bell-shaped curve. India has been no exception. Also, it has seen a high proportion of cases and deaths of people above the age of 65 living in densely packed cities, hewing to infection trends around the world.

"There's nothing unusual about infections dropping in India. There's no miracle here," says Dr Shahid Jameel, a leading virologist.

Experts say there's no dearth of possible causes - explained below - for the relatively low severity of the disease and its toll.

We still don't have causal explanations. But we do know India as a nation is far from herd immunity," says Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan who has been closely tracking the pandemic. Herd immunity happens when a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease through vaccination or through the mass spread of the disease.

Why is India far from reaching herd immunity?
The latest sero survey - studies that pick up antibodies - suggests 21% of adults and 25% of children have been already infected with the virus.

It also found that 31% of people living in slums, 26% of non-slum urban populations and 19% living in rural areas have been exposed to the virus. That's far below 50% - a figure reported by some of the bigger cities, such as Pune and Delhi. Here, there is evidence of much higher levels of exposure to the virus, hinting that these places are likely closer to herd immunity.

But experts say the numbers are still too low.

"There is no region in the country which can be deemed to have attained herd immunity, though small pockets may exist," Dr K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, a Delhi-based think tank, told me.

So people who have still not been exposed to the virus in places with high prevalence of infection may remain protected in their communities but would become vulnerable if they travelled to areas where transmission levels are lower.

So why are cases dropping?
Experts say there could be a couple of different reasons.

For one, India has seen a "patchwork" pandemic with cases waxing and waning at different times in different parts of the country.

More people have been infected in cities - especially in packed slums - and in developed, urbanised districts than in smaller towns or villages. In all of these places, their exposure to the virus has varied significantly. Cases have now slowed down in most urban areas, but rural India still remains a bit of a mystery.