NEW DELHI: India added a record 80,092 cool covid cases on Sunday, becoming the first country in the world to cross the 80,000 mark in a single day since the outbreak of the pandemic, even as the week ending August 30 turned out to be the worst of the month. The growth rate in both recent cases and deaths not only increased after a fall, but doubled compared to the previous week.
The peak of more than 80,000 comes on a Sunday, when the number of recent infections has been less than on other days of the week due to a pause in testing on the weekends. The highest count on a Sunday was last recorded on August 9 with 63,851 new cases.
However, more alarming than the new spike in recent infections is the growth rate of new infections and the number of victims that soared in the last week of August after a drop seen in the first weeks of the month. With more than 76,000 new cases registered daily for five consecutive days, this week’s growth rate of 13.1% was almost three times the 4.7% growth recorded the previous week. This was 5.9% in the previous week and 10.9% in the first week of the month (August 3-9).
Similarly, with more than 1,000 recent deaths recorded over four consecutive days, the growth rate of deaths this week, at 3.9%, was more than double the 1.7% recorded in the previous week.
Sunday’s spike in new cases came after Maharashtra posted its second-highest increase with 16,408 infections, more than 16,000 cases for the second day in a row, as well as five other states / UTs that posted their highest peaks: UP (which crossed the 6,000 – first-time marking with 6,233 new cases), Rajasthan (1,450 new cases), Madhya pradesh (1,558), Chhattisgarh (1,471) and Jammu & Kashmir (786).
With 970 recent deaths on Sunday, India’s death toll edged a bit closer to the 65,000 mark at 64,550, according to figures provided by the state government compiled by TOI. Maharashtra, the hardest hit state, recorded 296 new deaths on Sunday, bringing the figure to 24,399, which is nearly 38% of the country’s total deaths. Maharashtra recorded its highest peak with 16,867 new cases just one day ago.
While the number of cumulative cases in the country crossed the 36 lakh mark on Sunday at 36,16,730, the number of patients who have recovered is 27,67,412. The number of active cases is close to the 8 lakh mark at 7,84,768.
Andhra Pradesh emerged as the second most affected state in the country with 10,603 new infections, bringing the state’s number of cases to 4,24,767 and pushing Tamil nadu to third place with a number of cases of 4,22,085.
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