Updates From The Most Vaccinated State in India
“Apart from this death, we are noticing a gradual increase in the number of cases among schoolchildren. That’s worrying for us.”
Headline Below:
October 23rd.
Only one out of 418 Covid +ve pupils needed hospitalisation after Himachal schools reopened
13-year-old Kangra girl succumbs, 210 students have recovered
Context: This state is called Himachal Pradesh, 103% Single dosed and over 50% double dosed. State capital Shimla was the Summer Capital of British Raj in India. Being a Himalayan Province, they likely want to quickly vaccinate so that they can restart tourism. They are also likely a GAVI/COVAX pilot project state as well, deducing from this advertorial from March 10 just before the Delta Wave. “gavi.org/vaccineswork/end-tunnel-virus-then-vaccine-reach-remote-himalayan-valley”
Have to keep an eye on this to understand the evolution of SARS-COV-2 and Covid.
Some more headlines and Pictures.
Interesting trivia, Note that both the highest (Himachal) and lowest (Jharkhand) coverage states have a high percentage of of scheduled tribes population or indigenous people.
One was selected by an International Vaccine Deployment program. So level of uptake isn’t necessarily a measure of choice made free of coercion, but also highly influenced by international access and interests.
At the moment, Hamirpur, Kangra and Una districts are giving some jitters to the health officials. “The positivity rate is rising in these districts. We are anyway keeping a close watch on the situation,” Bairwa added.
Out of curiosity, I wanted to look up what was happening, and there is an amazing website for the Indian Covid Outbreak but they had this notice.
Regardless, here are some snapshots I took and plan to take before they take it down (which I think personally might be a big loss for early signal tracking).
Comparing the Least vs Most vaccinated and India as a control. Note: Both States have increased commercial and economic activity recently but the nature is touristic in Himachal Pradesh (Highest Coverage) and Industrial in Jharkhand (Lowest Coverage). No Covid passes in Jharkhand from what I could tell (could be wrong) but in Himachal Pradesh, only double Vaccinated allowed to enter freely.
Notice Kerala, the second highest Vaccine Coverage is also the second highest in test positivity (10.5%) while Himachal Pradesh is 7th (2.6%) and Jharkhand is 24th (0.1%). India overall test positivity is 1.3%.
Nothing conclusive. But very interesting nonetheless because it’s showing the complications of cherry picking (Example: neighboring Himalayan tourist destination, Kashmir, which has high vaccination and high lockdown from before the Pandemic in 2019 August and border control with low positivity)
More Graphs From Recent Past of Himachal, Jharkhand and India as a control.
Home-Work Covid IQ Test, if you have made it this far.
Label Each Graph: India, Himachal Pradesh (GAVI-COVAX Project) or Jharkhand (No Media/WHO). Label “None” if you suspect it’s something else in the Comments.
(L is 100K, K is 1000, so per 100,000 People.)
Graph 1
Graph 2
Graph 3Dra