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Amitabh Bachchan, whose face is everywhere in the country, checked into a hospital with mild symptoms. His son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter have also become infected.
By Jeffrey Gettleman
NEW DELHI — When this country’s biggest film star, Amitabh Bachchan, announced Saturday night that he had contracted the coronavirus, a loud alarm bell rang across India.
Mr. Bachchan, known as Big B, is not simply an enormously successful actor. He is one of India’s most revered figures. His face and rich, avuncular voice, dripping with gravitas, are everywhere, deployed in ads for household products, voice-overs at museums and countless public service campaigns. He was recently roped into doing a campaign on — what else? — the coronavirus.
The worry was that if Big B could catch the virus, anybody could, and with India getting walloped by Covid-19, Mr. Bachchan, 77, said on Twitter on Saturday: “All that have been in close proximity to me in the last 10 days are requested to please get themselves tested!”
India is now racking up more new reported infections each day — about 30,000 — than any other country except the United States and Brazil — and it is rapidly catching up to Brazil. India now has the third-highest total cases after the United States and Brazil.
The authorities in several big Indian cities and states are reinstating quarantines after attempting to loosen things up to stimulate a critically wounded economy. The borders between states are again being rigorously patrolled, with visitors shunted off to isolation centers.
International travel is still blocked. Hospitals are overflowing with the sick. Even emergencies are being turned away. One pregnant woman was left to die in the back of an ambulance a few weeks ago after being rejected from eight hospitals in 15 hours.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to lift spirits by saying in televised speeches that India is still doing better than richer countries, especially when it comes to the death rate. India has reported about 16 coronavirus-related deaths per million people, while the United States, Brazil, Spain and Italy have all lost hundreds per million.
Experts think this might be for a few reasons. India’s average age, around 28, is younger than that of other countries. Obesity is less prevalent, too, and many doctors believe that obesity creates a greater vulnerability to the coronavirus. Some medical professionals also believe that Indians have strong immune systems because of their constant exposure to microbes, living in cities that are not as clean as cities in the West.
Another explanation, though, might simply be testing — or the lack of it. India has performed far fewer coronavirus tests per capita than many other countries have.
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