I haven’t been tracking India, but I don’t have any reason to think there was a large behavioral change since February that could take us from static to doubling every week. What could this be other than the variant?
I’m putting it at about 85% that the surge in India’s primary cause is that the B.1.617 variant is far more infectious than their previous variant.
I don’t have much better data about how much to attribute the surge to the variant because as far as I’ve seen there isn’t any, but in the weeks before the surge began, there was a sizeable contingent of people predicting that cases would go up very badly in April even before news of the variant, because of religious festivals (Kumbh Mela in mid-April saw millions of people in crowds without masks after many of the priests tested positive) and regional elections (standard practice to have huge crowds of people surrounding candidates on the road as they pass by, most places didn’t stop this year) happening at the same time.
This article gives a bit of credence to the possibility that some countries had populations with higher prior immunity than others. I can’t say whether this is true or not, but if so, it’s possible that’s where the new variant differs. And because India was hit far less hard than people expected, many weren’t following mask and distancing protocols by April, which meant new viral loads would have been very opportune.
I don’t have much better data about how much to attribute the surge to the variant because as far as I’ve seen there isn’t any, but in the weeks before the surge began, there was a sizeable contingent of people predicting that cases would go up very badly in April even before news of the variant, because of religious festivals (Kumbh Mela in mid-April saw millions of people in crowds without masks after many of the priests tested positive) and regional elections (standard practice to have huge crowds of people surrounding candidates on the road as they pass by, most places didn’t stop this year) happening at the same time.
This article gives a bit of credence to the possibility that some countries had populations with higher prior immunity than others. I can’t say whether this is true or not, but if so, it’s possible that’s where the new variant differs. And because India was hit far less hard than people expected, many weren’t following mask and distancing protocols by April, which meant new viral loads would have been very opportune.