Shruti MenonIndia has the third-largest number of coronavirus cases in the world after the US and Brazil with over 3.8 million infections reported so far.
That's not surprising given its huge population, but what is the scale of the epidemic in neighbouring countries?
Is the outbreak growing in South Asia? India's numbers have been rising fast after it relaxed a strict lockdown, imposed in the last week of March.
It's seen record numbers of daily cases, as it continues to expand its testing, doing one million tests in a single day on 21 August.
Can India test a million people a day?
But other countries in South Asia seem to be witnessing a downward trend in cases after steep increases in May and June, although Nepal is currently witnessing a surge.
In Pakistan, cases have fallen from a peak in mid-June of almost 6,000 new infections each day, to about a few hundred a day in September.Afghanistan's numbers have been falling after a spike in mid-June, although there are questions about the reliability of its official figures.
A recent survey conducted by their health ministry showed that more than a third of the country's population could have been infected.
In Nepal, the government imposed a lockdown which went on for 100 days, during which time most cases were in areas bordering India. It's imposed new local restrictions in several provinces, as infections have been going up in some densely-populated urban areas.
The health ministry announced on Tuesday that the virus has entered the community in 12 of Nepal's districts including the capital, Kathmandu.
Sri Lanka has much lower levels of infection. It has had spikes in cases since April, but has had relatively low numbers. It implemented a tight lockdown, traced contacts of positive cases and imposed strict quarantine rules.
"A thorough contact-tracing system was in place using public health officers, local police, intelligence officials and local administrative officials," says BBC Sinhala's Saroj Pathirana.
How much testing is done in South Asia?
"Total number of cases per million in India and the rest of South Asia are low, but so is the number of tests per million," says virologist Dr Shahid Jameel.
He says that while total numbers of tests in these countries seem high, they are not when you factor in population sizes.
India has has so far conducted 43 million tests. Pakistan has carried out more than 2.6 million.
But per capita tests in these countries are far lower than in other countries.
And in Pakistan and Bangladesh, testing levels have fallen, which will have had an impact on the number of positive cases recorded.
Pakistan conducted over 31,000 tests per day in June. And on 27 July, a record 41,666 tests were conducted - the highest number ever done in Pakistan.
But the numbers of tests fell sharply over the following days, declining to a low of 10,759 on 3 August, before rising again.
A government survey conducted in July around the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, suggested that nearly 300,000 people may have been infected by the virus there alone, a majority of them asymptomatic.
Bangladesh's testing numbers have also gone down after the government introduced a high testing fee in July. There's also been a scandal around the sale of fake negative test certificates.
In Nepal, a total of 705,560 tests had been conducted as of 1 September, with just over 10,000 tests a day.
Testing data for Afghanistan is not available and the Red Crescent has expressed concern that the actual number of cases could be much higher than officially announced.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a benchmark range for adequate testing of between 10 and 30 per confirmed case in a country or region.
South Asian countries fare poorly on this measure.
Russia and Japan, which have populations similar to Bangladesh, are testing far more widely, finding a positive case for every 37 and 27 tests respectively. But Bangladesh is identifying one positive case for every five tests carried out - well below the WHO benchmark.
Nepal was finding a positive case for every 20 tests until August 19, down from 25 tests as of June 14.
What about the death rate in South Asia?
The overall death toll in India is now the third largest largest in the world, although the proportion of people who become ill and then die remains low compared to the global average.
Deaths recorded in other countries in the region are lower than in other countries where the virus took hold, whether we look at absolute numbers or per capita.
Click here to see the BBC interactive
This appears to be an encouraging sign, but there are questions about the reliability of data in a region with relatively low levels of public health spending.
"Many deaths are not reported within the vital registration system and the causes of deaths are incorrectly classified," said Professor Kamran Siddiqi, a public health expert at the University of York.
But Dr Shahid Jameel says even if deaths are under-reported, the difference from other areas of the world is "quite stark".
"The most plausible explanation is that the populations in South Asia are made up of far younger people than say in Europe and the US," Prof Siddiqi says.
https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-south-asia-lack-testing-233844660.html
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