New Delhi, May 30 (IANS): Even in the worst of the times during the Wave 1 of Covid pandemic last year, the country was still optimistic and general opinion was that the country is moving forward even in the difficult times.
But everything seems to have changed in last one month or so. Now majority of the Indians are saying that their personal life as well as the Country, both are in poor state, as per the IANS-CVoter Covid 19 Tracker.
The sample size of the Covid-19 tracker was 56685 and the period of the survey was January 1 to May 27, 2021 covering all 542 Lok Sabha segments.
Every 10th household in India is right now reporting an active case within immediate family members and almost every fifth household in India is reporting loss of life among near and dear ones, as per the IANS C Voter Tracker.
This means one in every 10 Indian families has at least one family member suffering from Covid and one in every 20 Indian families has self-reported a death within immediate or extended family.
Majority of Indians reported that in the last one year or so their overall living standard has dropped significantly. This happened almost a year back and that red line has not come down since then. Worse is, the ever-optimistic Indian is so much spiraling down the pessimism at the moment that they don't see any ray of hope in the coming 12 months either.
And the fear remains about someone in the family getting infected or not getting treatment. This fear is unlikely to go down till the actual number of cases go down and people start getting treatment and oxygen properly without getting too stressed about it. Our tracker is generally one to two weeks ahead of the official trendline, and we don't see that happening for next 6 to 8 weeks in near future.
The tracker found that Corona becomes the top issue, again in India and the number of confirmed +ve cases and deaths within immediate family as reported by Tracker is multiple times over the official Government numbers.
Even by the most conservative estimates, the self-reported ILI (Influenza like illness) symptoms is directly in sync with the trendline of self-reported Covid positive cases. Needless to say, that only a fraction of such cases have been tested for Covid, as usual. So, the lack of testing is being passed as lack of positive cases.
"Whichever way we calculate, the official records are showing less than 1/10th of numbers that is being reported by the public, be it in case of Active report or be it the case of mortalities. The self-reported numbers by "We, the people of India" are numbing, and experienced by all of us barring the "system", the tracker found.