Watch | COVID-19 Updates: Experts Say Lack of Press Briefings Is Hindering Efforts

Over 22,000 new cases have been reported in a single-day yet again. India has reported over 20,000 new infections for the fifth consecutive day. With this, the total confirmed cases in India have crossed the 7 lakh mark.

According to a report in The Wire by Ruchika Chitravanshi, experts in India have said that insufficient data is getting in the way of tackling COVID-19.

Chitrvanshi, in her story, notes that as cases of coronavirus began to rise in Delhi, the information in the state’s daily health bulletin began to shrink. The bulletins also stopped providing the age breakup of patients. In fact, on some days in May and June, there was no health bulletin at all.

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Since early May, the Union health ministry also began to share COVID-19 numbers only once a day, and since June 11, it has discontinued regular press briefings to give updates on the pandemic and answer critical questions.

The health ministry, too, only provides information on active cases, discharged cases and deaths in each state on a given day.

Again, there is no current information on the age-group or risk profile of COVID-19 patients who are in ICUs or on ventilators or the number of asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic patients.

A professor of theoretical physics at Ashoka university told her that they have no idea of mortality by age bracket across different regions of India. “Scientists outside ICMR should have had full access to the serological data to understand the region-wide spread and to analyse the accuracy of the numbers and make estimates of the infection fatality rate,” he said.

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