Is the sharp drop in coronavirus cases in India as exciting and curious as some think?
Is the epidemic retreating firmly in a country where many early model makers have predicted millions of deaths from Covid-19?
In October, I wrote at length about why the epidemic had slowed in India. Cases reached a record high in mid-September - there were more than a million active cases.
After that, the daily deaths and the number of cases began to decline despite constant testing and some short and fierce infections in cities like Delhi.
The situation has improved significantly since then.
By the middle of last week, India was barely counting an average of 10,000 cases of COVID-19 every day. The seven-day rolling average daily death from illness has fallen below 100.
More than half of India's states have not reported any COVID-19 deaths. On Tuesday, Delhi, once a hotbed of infection, had not recorded a single death from COVID-19, for the first time in 10 months.
To date, India has recorded more than 10 million infections - the second highest infection rate in the world after the United States. More than 150,000 deaths have been reported from the disease.
The number of deaths per million people is 112, which is significantly lower than what has been reported in Europe or North America. It's also clear that the decrease in cases is not due to decreased testing.
They usually rise and fall in most epidemics in a bell-shaped curve. India was no exception. It has also witnessed a high rate of cases and deaths of people over the age of 65 who live in densely populated cities, keeping pace with infection trends around the world.
"There is nothing extraordinary about low infections in India," says Dr. Shahid Jamil, a pioneering virologist. "There is no miracle here."
Experts say there is no dearth of potential causes - explained below - of the disease's relatively low severity and damage.
"We still don't have a causal explanation. But we know that India as a country is far from herd immunity," says Pramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan who is closely tracking the epidemic.
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