New Delhi – India reported more than 64,500 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of people in the South Asian country that has tested positive for the disease to more than 2.76 million. India remains the third least affected nation, behind the US and Brazil, in terms of the total number of cases, but it is at the top in terms of new infections.
Over the past 15 days, India has been swallowing more COVID-19 cases daily than any other country in the world. The country has added 913,473 new cases in the past 15 days, averaging 60,898 per day. The total number of confirmed cases since the pandemic started has doubled in just 24 days.
If India’s infection rate continues to climb, India could soon take over Brazil to become the second second country in the world in terms of the number of cases.
India has largely phased out what started as the world’s largest lockon of coronavirus. In March, the government ordered its 1.3 billion people to stay indoors for essential reasons alone. Most businesses and services were allowed to reopen weeks ago in large parts of the country, but limited restrictions remain at large meetings and in some virus hotspots.
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While India’s infection rates are alarming, the country has reported a lower death rate and a higher recovery time than most other countries hard hit by the pandemic.
But on Wednesday, India reported 1,099 deaths from coronavirus, its highest single-day toll to date, bringing the total death toll to more than 53,000. That is still less than half the number who officially died of the disease in Brazil, and it is declining compared to the more than 175,000 lives lost in the US, even though both of these countries have many higher case totals.
Good strategy, or bad numbers?
Of the total 2.76 million cases in India, more than 2 million people have been recovered – better than a recovery time of 73%. In comparison, the US has a recovery time just over 53%.
“Higher numbers of recoveries and declining mortality have shown that India’s graded strategy has worked,” the Indian Ministry of Public Health said in a statement on Wednesday.
But experts continue to express fears that the government of India may die of coronavirus.
The World Health Organization and independent experts have worries worries about low test rates in the second most popular country in the world. India has administered more than 31 million tests, but that is only about 23,000 tests per million inhabitants – much lower than in the US, Russia and many European countries.
While the seemingly low death toll and higher recovery rates seem like good news to India, some experts believe that the country is yet to see the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the real figures, if they appear, could be grim.
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