Analysis of Bihar for Pandemic

Analysis of Bihar for Pandemic

Dr Himanshu Shekhar

This is 50th Post of the Blog.

Thanks to all readers, seniors, friends, colleagues and viewers.

This post is created for my Friend Shi Arun Kumar Dubey, who has been regularly feeding me with data about number of testing, number of cases and number of deaths in Bihar, before it is published in media. This post is dedicated to Shri Arun Kumar Dubey and it analyzes the state of Pandemic in Bihar till 07.07.2020.

Introduction: The Pandemic has knocked at the doorsteps of chief minister of Bihar on 06.07.2020, which triggered me to analyze the Pandemic for the state Bihar of India. Bihar reported first case on 22.03.2020, which reached 100 on 20.04.2020, which is a duration of 30 days. 1000 cases were reported on 14.05.2020, 24 days after 100^th case is reported. After that the rise has been very fast. 5000 cases were reported on 08.06.2020 and 10000 cases on 01.07.2020. One good thing about cases in Bihar is that number of deaths is limited and number of recoveries is good, resulting in very small and consistent number of active cases. Bihar reported 5000 recoveries by 19.06.2020 and active cases are most lingering around 3000. This post analyzes the trend of Pandemic in Bihar.

Types of Cases: The variation of confirmed cases, recovered cases and death cases are plotted for Bihar against time and unfortunately with a slow start, the number of confirmed cases is rising at a higher pace.

In the diagram, number of death is plotted on secondary axis and is 100 times smaller than other parameters, if scaled along primary y-axis. The confirmed cases and recoveries are moving almost parallel to each other. The death is also rising but pace is very slow. The active cases in second half of June was around 2000, but now it is picking up again. Death is touching 100 number. At present, daily number of cases is quite random in terms of recovery or death.

Derived Parameters: Growth factor is calculated for daily number of cases in Bihar and it has an average value slightly above 1 for June 2020. The doubling period has improved to 24 days, but it may not be a correct estimate. Rather than this, doubling rate per 1000 is another parameter devised, newly by me. This indicates equivalent doubling period, had the number of cases been 1000. So, current doubling period is rationalized to 1000 cases.

The rationalized doubling period takes into account, the initial value of confirmed cases. If 1000 to 2000 takes 15 days and 2000 to 4000 takes 30 days, then both have the same rationalized doubling period. The rationalized doubling period for Bihar is reducing continuously and currently it is around 1.98. As number of confirmed cases on 07.07.2020 is around 12000, the doubling period of 24 days is reduced accordingly.

The average daily growth rate, considering each last 7-days period is calculated. During second half of June 2020, it has come down to around 2.5, but now it has gone above 3.0%, indicating poor control and faster spread of Pandemic in Bihar.

Prediction: As Shri Arun Kumar Dubey was always worried about the rapid growth of confirmed cases, an attempt is made to predict the total number of confirmed cases. An exponential fit is attempted and Chi-Square optimization is applied to get the perfect curve matching to the other oscillating values of daily confirmed cases. 29.04.2020 is taken as reference date for calculation. The activation term is 0.023, which is less than that for India and probably rate of rise is slower in Bihar as compared to that in India (0.045).

From this optimized result, the value of total confirmed cases is calculated and current confirmed cases and prediction is superimposed on single plot. It is clear that the plot of prediction and actual if matching till 07.07.2020 and hopefully the rise is also captured by this plot.

From the calculation, following details are predicted for the number of confirmed cases. However, the number of deaths and number of recoveries are better at present. If the trend continues then some control is possible in future.

12 Jul	22 Jul	7 Aug	18 Aug	27 Aug	12 Sept	24 Sept
15000	20000	30000	40000	50000	75000	100000

Conclusion: On 07.07.2020, Bihar has 12570 confirmed cases, out of which 9284 cases have recovered and 104 deaths are reported. This makes number of active cases as 3182. Although a rise is suspected in Bihar, poor healthcare infrastructure may be detrimental to any such rise. Overall, the daily rise in confirmed cases in Bihar is checking the patience of people and current no control is a difficult situation. Hope that the predicted rise in confirmed cases are controlled and recoveries in Bihar must improve over period of time.

Dr Himanshu Shekhar