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— Breaking News —

India, the world’s second most populous country has confirmed that it now has a second patient with the coronavirus. The patient last returned from the Wuhan region of China on Jan. 24, meaning that, while we don’t know their story, spent 9 days traveling around India before the virus was confirmed.

Any spread of the virus is concerning, however, Kerala, with a population of almost 35 million is actually one of India’s less populous states with the best healthcare system out of all of India’s states. Still, in the world’s second most populous country, any sign of the virus spreading is concerning.

This is especially true given how porous India’s border is with southeast Asia, when combined with China’s border.

Additionally, the number of patients under observation (from 800 in our update two days ago here) has more than doubled to 1700 with 70 of them in isolation wards. Given that getting a virus testing kit has been considered winning the lottery, due to manufacturing shortages, this number could take a while to catch up to the number of true cases.

As stated before, I recommend keeping a close eye on India over the next 2-3 weeks, what happens there could foreshadow the remainder of the outbreak, either in the ability to stop the infection, or if it spreads rapidly.