Testing times

检查时间

Infections in India are soaring, but increased testing will help

印度的感染人数正在飙升，但增加检测将有所帮助

Covid-19 has spread from big cities to country towns with alarming speed

新冠病毒已以惊人的速度从大城市向乡镇蔓延

Jul 11th 2020 | DELHI

SANDEEP IS ANXIOUS. A few days ago the owner of the clinic where his wife works as a receptionist came down with covid-19. Authorities sealed the building and whisked her off to quarantine, then sent him to a different isolation centre. Stuck now in a hostel, he worries that even if he tests negative, the families whose clothes he irons for a living will be afraid to let him back. They won’t appreciate that he covered for them, lying when asked if he had been visiting houses lately. “I didn’t want to inconvenience customers who might get forced to be tested,” he explains. With the clinic also holding up his wife’s salary, the couple will have to borrow to stay afloat.

桑迪普（印度男子名）处在焦虑之中。几天前，他妻子担任接待员的诊所的老板感染了新冠病毒。当局封锁了大楼，迅速将她送往隔离，然后将他送往另一个隔离中心。现在被困在旅社里，他担心即使他的检测结果呈阴性，那些让他熨衣服使其为生的家庭也不敢让他回去。他们不可能领会这位男子为他的客户们做出的掩饰，（即使）在被问及近期是否与家人有接触时，他撒谎应对。他解释说:“我不希望给我的客户们带来不便，不希望他们因为我而被迫进行新冠病毒测试。”用于诊所也是支持着妻子的薪水来源，这对夫妇将不得不借钱维持生计。

词汇

 whisk someone off to/匆匆赶某人去

afloat/经济上周转得开的，不欠债的

 

Sangli, the big country town where Sandeep (not his real name) lives, is 300km (190 miles) south-east of Mumbai. Until recently the pandemic had spared such places. Now, even as the curve has flattened or fallen in Delhi and Mumbai, it is arching sharply upwards in satellite towns, and penetrating ever further into the interior. It is this surge that is pushing India inexorably upwards in the league of covid cases and which, given its population of 1.3bn, will probably see it rise to the top. The wave is moving beyond those parts of the country that are best equipped to manage it, to places that may prove far more vulnerable.

桑迪普(化名)居住的乡村小镇桑利位于孟买东南300公里处。直到最近，疫情还没有波及到这些地方。如今，即使在德里和孟买，这条曲线已经变平或下降，但在卫星城，这条曲线急剧上升，并进一步向内陆延伸。这种激增正无情地推动印度在新冠病例排行榜上节节攀升，鉴于印度有13亿人口，它很可能会升至榜首。这股浪潮正从美国那些配备最精良的地区蔓延到那些可能更加脆弱的地区。

词汇

satellite town/卫星城【大城管辖区范围内或与市中心相距不到100km的范围内，在生产、生活等方面与市区有密切联系，人口规模在数万以上的城镇。】

Penetrate/渗透；穿透

Inexorably/不可逆转地，不可阻挡地

League/范畴

   

With nearly 800,000 confirmed cases so far, India ranks third after America and Brazil in infections. The tally of covid deaths, over 21,000, is relatively modest. It works out at fewer than 15 per million, a quarter of the world average and a fraction of the 651 per million in Britain. But, for reasons ranging from the relatively low level of testing to spotty medical record-keeping to political interference, many experts believe India is undercounting deaths by a third or more. With cases rising by some 25,000 a day (see chart), fatalities are anyway bound to soar.

到目前为止，印度有近80万确诊病例，在感染人数上仅次于美国和巴西，位居第三。新冠死亡人数超过21000，相对来说不算多。计算出来的数字不到百万分之15，是世界平均水平的四分之一，与英国的百万分之651相比更是零头。但是，由于检测水平相对较低、医疗记录参差不齐、政治干预等原因，许多专家认为，印度将死亡人数少算了三分之一或更多。随着每天约2.5万例病例的增加(见图表)，死亡人数无论如何都会飙升。

 

 

Unlike Brazil and America, India responded quickly and forcefully to the pandemic. Perhaps too quickly: two months of nationwide lockdown shattered the economy, but only slowed the disease. “You flattened the wrong curve,” is how Rajiv Bajaj, a prominent businessman, puts it. One deadly error was to freeze all travel with no warning, trapping millions of migrant workers where they were no longer wanted, in big cities with the highest rates of infection, and then later to let them go, carrying the infection with them. Local edicts have caused similar spikes: the state government in Tamil Nadu has declared several sudden lockdowns, prompting crowding in markets that have proved dangerous vectors for covid.

与巴西和美国不同的是，印度对疫情的反应迅速而有力。也许是太快了:两个月的全国封锁摧毁了经济，但只是减缓了疾病的蔓延。著名商人拉吉夫•巴贾吉(Rajiv Bajaj)说:“你把错误的曲线拉平了。”一个致命的错误是在没有任何警告的情况下冻结了所有的旅行，把数以百万计的农民工困在感染率最高的大城市，让他们带着感染离开。地方法令也造成了类似的激增:泰米尔纳德邦政府宣布了几次紧急封锁，导致市场拥挤，而这些市场已被证明是新冠的危险媒介。

词汇

Edict/法令；布告

Spike/猛增；急升【a spike in oil prices 油价的急剧上涨】

At Sulerikadu, south of the state capital Chennai, fishermen complain that when lockdown was lifted after eight weeks, a seasonal ban on fishing kept the fleet grounded. This was followed by a closure of the market, so that when they could at last catch fish they had no place to sell it. Nearby farmers voice similar despair. A transport ban at harvest time kept many from selling their crops. Individuals are not the only ones hurt. In the last two weeks of June, with shops everywhere mostly open for the first time since March, nationwide sales remained a dismal 67% lower than in the same period last year, says the Retail Association of India.

在邦首府钦奈以南的苏莱里卡杜，渔民们抱怨说，在禁渔令解除八周后，一项季节性禁渔令令船队搁置。随之而来的是市场的关闭，这样，当他们终于能捕到鱼的时候，他们就没有地方卖了。附近的农民也表达了同样的绝望。收获季节的运输禁令使许多人无法出售他们的农作物。受伤害的不仅仅是个人。据印度零售协会(Retail Association of India)说，在6月的最后两周，随着各地商店大多自3月份以来首次开门营业，印度全国的销售额仍较去年同期低了67%，令人沮丧。

词汇

Dismal/凄凉的，忧郁的；阴沉的

  

Yet even as tales of economic woe multiply, and are compounded by the spreading tragedy of covid itself, lessons are being learned. Some Indian states, such as Kerala in the far south and Punjab in the north, have ably contained the disease. Dharavi, a sprawling slum in Mumbai whose density and poor sanitation seemed likely to create conditions for covid to spin out of control, has instead proved a model of how thoughtful, local interventions in co-operation with residents can stem its spread. From hundreds a day in May, new daily infections among the slum’s 850,000 people are down to a handful.

然而，尽管经济灾难的故事层出不穷，同时新冠病毒自身的悲剧也在不断蔓延，但人们正在吸取教训。印度的一些邦，如偏远南部的喀拉拉邦和北部的旁遮普邦，已经有效地控制了这种疾病。达拉维是孟买一个不断扩张的贫民窟，其密度大，卫生条件差，似乎有可能为新冠病毒的失控创造条件。相反，达拉维却证明了一个典范，即通过深思熟虑的地方干预，与居民合作，可以遏制其蔓延。从5月份每天几百人，每天在这个贫民窟的85万人中新感染的人数减少到屈指可数。

词汇

Woe/困难，灾难

Sanitation/环境卫生；卫生设备

Intervention/介入；调停

 

In India’s big cities, fears that hospitals would be overwhelmed have for the most part failed to materialise, largely because medical protocols have been revised to keep all but those who are very ill from occupying beds. Hospitals, for example, can now send covid patients home as soon as they feel better, rather than having to wait for test results to prove they are free of the virus. One district of Delhi requisitioned more than 900 hotel rooms for use as isolation wards. In the end it has used just 25. The change in rules has also meant a welcome drop in what had become a nationwide rash of stories about patients being turned away from one hospital after another, for want of beds.

在印度的大城市，人们对医院不堪重负的担忧在很大程度上没有成为现实，这主要是因为医疗协议已经修改，除了重病患者以外，所有人都不得占用病床。例如，医院现在可以让新冠患者在病情好转后立即回家，而不必等待检测结果来证明他们已无病毒。德里的一个区征用了900多间酒店房间作为隔离病房。最终，它只使用了25个。在全国范围内，病人因缺乏床位而被一家又一家医院拒之门外的事件已成为一波又一波的“节奏”，而这项规定的改变也意味着人们迎来了此类情况的降低的改观。

词汇

Materialise/物质化；实现

Protocol/协议；草案

 

Another fear, that India would run out of ventilators, turned out to be still more misplaced. Even as doctors were finding that few patients benefited from forced ventilation, Indian manufacturers boosted production from 300 a month to some 30,000. Indian industry has proved so responsive to the crisis that it is now lobbying the government to drop restrictions on exports of medical equipment and protective gear. Makers of covid tests complain that their production was far outstripping the number of tests conducted, owing to cautious government guidance. At the centre’s behest, local authorities in Mumbai changed the rules no fewer than nine times. Often, even medical staff could not get tested—one reason why India has lost more than 100 doctors to the disease.

另一种担心，即印度将耗尽呼吸机，但有关方面已证实不仅仅是呼吸机的问题。尽管医生们发现很少有病人受益于强制供气，但印度制造商还是将产量从每月300台提高到了约3万台。事实证明，印度工业对危机反应迅速，现在正游说政府取消对医疗设备和防护装备的出口限制。新冠测试的制造商抱怨说，由于政府的谨慎指导，他们的产量远远超过了测试的数量。在该中心的要求下，孟买地方当局至少修改了九次规定。通常情况下，就连医务人员也无法进行检测——这也是印度有100多名医生死于该病的原因之一。

词汇

Ventilator/呼吸机

Gear/装置；工具

Outstrip/超过；胜过

Behest/  命令；邀请

  

With the price of tests dropping and restrictions on their use lifted, the country should soon be conducting more than the current 200,000 a day. Mylab, a company based in the city of Pune, says it alone has the capacity to process 2m samples a week. This could be a big help, since testing allows a better understanding of the disease’s trajectory. Researchers at MIT recently suggested that India could have as many as 287,000 new infections a day by January, based on the old level of testing. That picture should now improve. Yet Sandeep, for one, is not reassured. Even in a relative backwater like Sangli, 28 neighbourhoods have been quarantined. “The number of cases is increasing a lot,” he says. “People should take it seriously. Only when it hits you do you know how bad it is.”

随着检测价格的下降和对其使用的限制的解除，该国应该很快就能每天进行超过20万次的检测。位于浦那市的Mylab公司表示，仅他一家公司就有能力每周处理200万份样品。这可能是一个很大的帮助，因为测试可以更好地了解疾病的发展轨迹。麻省理工学院(MIT)的研究人员最近表示，按照以前的检测水平，到明年1月，印度每天可能会新增28.7万例感染病例。这种情况现在应该有所改善。然而，桑迪普就是其中之一，他并不放心。即使在桑利这样相对闭塞的地区，也有28个社区被隔离。他说:“病例数量正在大幅增加。”人们应该认真对待它。只有当你染上它的时候，你才知道它有多严重。”

词汇

Trajectory/轨道，轨线

Backwater/停滞不进的状态或地方