Baltimore, June 16, 2020: Steve Hanke, a top professor of the Johns Hopkins University and a renowned economist, has come out in the open and criticized the Covid-19 numbers put out by the Indian government.
The Indian government has been releasing numbers on a day to day basis. The Health Ministry briefs media almost every day and provides an update on the coronavirus pandemic situation in the country. However, Professor Hanke has said that the numbers of the country look highly suspicious and have warned that India might soon have an Italy-like situation due to its low testing.
On June 9, the professor tweeted a graph from the Johns Hopkins University website which reads “The Rotten Apples” referring to the nations with suspicious statistics. He wrote, “These countries are the rotten Apples of the coronavirus data. These countries either do not report Covid data or are reporting highly suspicious data.”
The other countries on the list include Vietnam, Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, and China. India and Turkey are the only two democracies included in the list. Professor Hanke has earlier criticized India in its handling of the novel coronavirus. He had condemned the Narendra Modi led government of conducting an insufficient number of tests.
For the first time since the outbreak was reported in the country, India has more number of recoveries than active cases as of June 15.
On June 16, India’s tally of total positive cases was more than 354,161. A total of 187,552 patients have successfully recovered from the deadly disease. The active cases in the county was 154,643. The death tally, however, crossed 11,921.
In terms of the number of cases, India stood fourth in the world behind the United States, Brazil and Russia.
Source: metrosaga.com