The number of coronavirus infections in India surpassed the 5 million mark with 91,136 new cases reported on Tuesday as infections continued to rise at an alarming rate in the nation with the worst case rate ever recorded.
India’s total case count is 5,017,914, behind only the United States, which with 6.76 million confirmed infections, is the worst affected country in the world. Additionally, 1,284 new deaths were reported Tuesday, bringing the death toll nationwide to 82,091. A total of 3,937,066 infected people have recovered so far, according to the HT panel.
At 998,757, the number of active cases in the country was slightly below the 1 million mark as of Tuesday night.
India now accounts for nearly a sixth of all reported Covid-19 cases worldwide since the outbreak began in China nine months ago.
The country also has the worst recorded daily infection rate in the world. The seven-day average of daily cases in India is 93,334, much higher than the peak in the US, where the number touched 69,373 for the week ending June 25, according to worldometers.info.
Unlike the US, India’s track record has shown no signs of a spike so far and has also been growing steadily. The seven-day average has risen 50.7% in the last 30 days – it was 61,933 on August 17.
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However, in terms of deaths, India has done much better. The fatality rate (CFR), the proportion of infected people who have died from the disease, is 1.64%, which is not only better than the world average of 3.16%, but has also improved from steadily. The CFR in the United States is 2.95% and in Brazil 3.04%.
The rapid increase in daily cases has meant that active cases in India have seen an almost constant increase. Active cases, which is calculated by subtracting the number of deaths and recoveries from the total number of cases, is a key metric because it reflects the cost of a region’s healthcare facilities. In the last 30 days, active cases have increased from 672,269 to 998,757– an increase of almost 50%.
One of the key features of the outbreak in India so far has been that almost every hot spot region in the country is still seeing an upward curve – daily cases in these regions continue to grow and have not shown a significant drop.
The seven-day average of daily cases in Maharashtra, the state with the highest number of cases and deaths, has nearly doubled, from 11,406 to 22,012 in the past 30 days. In Andhra Pradesh, in second place in total cases, this number has increased from 8,726 to 9,798 in the same time period, and in Karnataka it has increased from 7,276 to 9,011. In Uttar Pradesh (fifth highest number of cases) this has increased from 4,499 to 6,509.
However, Tamil Nadu (in third place) is one of the regions that appears to be experiencing a prolonged plateau: the average daily cases in the state decreased marginally from 5,876 to 5,610 in 30 days.
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In Delhi, the average daily case has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 1,033 to 4,094. In early August, the capital was one of the only major regions in the country that had managed to successfully contain its outbreak when the average number of daily cases fell to less than 1,000. The cases, however, skyrocketed again and are now at an all-time high. To be sure, the increase in cases in Delhi has come with a record increase in daily tests.
Testing, in fact, has been one of the areas in which the country has reported massive improvements and the increase in daily testing has been a common factor in most regions. Average daily tests nationwide have increased from nearly 780,000 to 1,100,000 in the past 30 days.
The government said on Tuesday that India has “learned from the experience of nations” that suffered high mortalities. India was able to “spread the curve” of coronavirus infections due to the national lockdown imposed in late March, government officials said during the Union Ministry of Health’s weekly Covid-19 press conference on Tuesday.
“The United States and the European nations experienced a spike, then the cases went down and now there is a second wave there. We took our lesson from the first wave there. We distributed the curve so that we did not have many deaths. It was because we had an effective lockdown, we didn’t have a big spike at all, ”said Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) CEO Dr. Balram Bhargava.
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