Comparison of the conditions of the USA and India in the corona outbreak

5 min readMay 15, 2020

Corona-virus has turned into the big face as an epidemic. It has been proven fatal not only in terms of health but has been become an economic epidemic too. The world economy is going down week by week. The scientists are in the search of the vaccine and are working day-night to be ready to face the epidemic with the vaccine.

In this blog, I have tried comparing the conditions from the USA and India. I have concentrated on some points like what were the conditions at the time when the very first case of corona-virus appeared in both the countries, what are their conditions now in terms of recovery and deaths of the affected, what is the death rate in both the countries, what are the reactions of govt. of both the countries now, and many more things.

When it all got started

The first case of the COVID-19 pandemic in India was reported on 30 January 2020 in Kerala, a southwestern coastal state, originating from China. Whereas in the USA it was some 11 days earlier on 19th January 2020. As of 15 May 2020, the total cases, deaths, and recoveries can be seen in the following table-

A comparative study about the total case, the deaths, and the recoveries

> Chart for the comparative look the total confirmed deaths.

Source: European CDC, last updated on 14 May 2020

The greenish-blue curve shows the total death rise in India whereas the red curve shows the same for the USA.

> Chart showing the comparative look at the rate of daily rising COVID-19 patients

The dark blue curve shows the total death rise in India whereas the red curve shows the same for the USA. The high rate of rising COVID-19 patients in the USA can be seen easily.

> Total confirmed death per million people

It can be insightful to know not just how many have died compared to how many people actually live in that country.

For instance, if 1,000 people died in Iceland, out of a population of about 340,000, that would have a far bigger impact than the same number dying in the USA, with its population of 331 million.

It can be seen that the per million death of USA is about 77 times higher than that of India with just 0.07 deaths per million.

> Testing for COVID-19

When a communicable disease outbreak begins, the ideal response is for public health officials to begin testing for it early.

That leads to quick identification of cases, quick treatment for those people and immediate isolation to prevent spread. Early testing also helps to identify anyone who came into contact with infected people so they too can be quickly treated.

While we are obviously not in that ideal situation with COVID-19, testing remains critical.

The testing of COVID-19 patients per thousand for the united states is very high than that of India comparably. In the USA, it is 30.34 tests per thousand, whereas it is around 1.41 tests per thousand in India.

> Government Responses

Now, the biggest responsibility after the citizens comes on the ruling govt. as to how they take decisions so that maximum people could be saved and at that same time, the economy wouldn’t get too downtrodden. It has already become the time of the economic recession. There are several decisions taken by the govt. like school closures, Internations travel control, etc. Let’s see how the govt. of both nations has reacted (or is reacting) towards the reforms to be taken during the spread.

School Closures

As can be seen, both the countries have taken required(all levels) decisions to control the epidemic.

International travel controls

This interactive chart maps control on international travel across the world.

Again, both nations have put a ban on high-risk regions.

Government Stringency Index

Those above decisions can be overall measured using Government Stringency Index. The Government Stringency Index simply records the number and strictness of government policies, and should not be interpreted as ‘scoring’ the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response.

As can be seen, India is having a greater index than the USA from the beginning itself(mostly).

Well, when it comes to comparing the contributions of the doctors and other social workers, I think it would rather be a vague thought to do so. Such people in this difficult time have proven to be the incarnation of god for us. The given picture is evident enough.