But all is not well in the state that had early success in taming the virus. Kerala’s active case load has more than doubled in the past two weeks, to 92,246. This is one-tenth of the total count in India. Only Maharashtra and Karnataka have more, but their spread is much slower.
Eight of the 10 districts with the worst spikes of infections in the last week are in Kerala. The case load increased more than 20% in the state’s 14 districts in this period, data from howindialives.com showed. Testing in the state is the highest per million residents, with around 8 lakh of samples tested in the past two weeks.
Karnataka, which was the biggest hotspot in July, is another point of concern. Active cases increased 11% in the past seven days, the second worst growth rate after Kerala. The outbreak in Chhattisgarh has slowed down, but deaths are increasing rapidly (24% weekly growth). Typically, a decrease in new cases is reflected in a slowdown in deaths only after a few weeks.
All calculations are based on seven-day moving averages to minimize the effect of volatile and delayed reports. National and state data come from the Union Ministry of Health.
Chhattisgarh became the 15th state to cross 1,000 deaths this week. The tolls for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are very close to 10,000 each. Andhra Pradesh (6,086 deaths) now has the fifth highest figure after surpassing Delhi (5,616). The rate of increase in deaths has improved in most states.
With this, India has 105,526 covid-related deaths as of Thursday morning, a weekly jump of 8%. Among the states with at least 500 deaths, Chhattisgarh (24%), Kerala (24%) and Assam (15%) saw the largest increase in their death toll this week.
The number of active cases decreased 3% to 902,425; the count had increased 1% two weeks ago. Up to 19 states and union territories have more than 10,000 active cases now, but all except Chhattisgarh and Kerala have crossed the 80% mark in recovery rate, or the proportion of patients who have been discharged.
Among the 253 districts with at least 5,000 cases so far, the highest weekly growth was reported by Kozhikode (42%), Ernakulam (40%), Thrissur (39%), Kollam (39%) and Palakkad (34%), all in Kerala, the data from howindialives.com showed.
Among the 10 states with the most active cases, Kerala and Assam have conducted the most tests per million inhabitants over the past fortnight, and Chhattisgarh and West Bengal are the fewest, data from covid19india.org showed.
The total count of coronavirus patients in India increased to 6,835,655 as of Thursday morning. The country accounted for 26% of the 4.3 million cases reported globally during the last two weeks, the highest in the world. After steadily increasing, India’s share of the global death count has reached 10%. In just the past 14 days, the country accounted for 18% of the nearly 80,000 deaths, also the highest proportion.
Globally, the coronavirus case count has surpassed 36 million, including more than 1.05 million deaths and nearly 25.2 million recoveries (70%), data from Johns Hopkins University showed.
However, many more cases may not have been reported. Earlier this week, Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s leading emergency expert, said that “best estimates” indicate that 10% of the world’s population may have been infected with the coronavirus. Serosurveys, which are large-scale tests for antibodies to the virus, have hinted at the same in Indian cities.
With the spread slowing, the large Indian states finally showed signs of economic revival in September. The center has allowed states to decide on the opening of movie theaters on a limited basis. As the economy recovers, Indians expect the latest slowdown in the pandemic to hold and that the curve will eventually flatten out.
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