Coronavirus numbers explained: In less than 20 days, cases spiked by over three times

Coronavirus cases: Migrant laborers with their families waiting for their turn for medical scanning before boarding the train at railway station in Chandigarh. (Express photo by Jasbir Malhi)

In less than 20 days, the novel Coronavirus numbers in India have gone up by more than three times. On Thursday, as nearly 4,000 new infections were discovered, the total number of confirmed cases had crossed 82,000. On April 25, this number was less than 27,000.

Only about 53,000 of them were, however, ‘active’, meaning the rest, over 28,000, had recovered from the disease, and were unlikely to infect others.

As was being expected, Tamil Nadu over took Gujarat on Thursday, to become the state with the second-highest caseload. Though Tamil Nadu has shown a slight slowdown in the last two days, it reported 447 new cases on Thursday which was enough to take it past Gujarat. Tamil Nadu now has 9,674 confirmed cases, a large number of them having been contributed by the Koyambedu market cluster in Chennai, while Gujarat, where 324 more people tested positive on Thursday, has 9,592.

Coronavirus cases: On Thursday, as nearly 4,000 new infections were discovered, the total number of confirmed cases had crossed 82,000. On April 25, this number was less than 27,000.

Maharashtra, with 27,524 confirmed cases, is way ahead. In fact, just Mumbai city has more cases than any other state. As on Thursday, Mumbai had 16,738 confirmed cases, and 621 deaths, which too was more than any other state.

With the restrictions on movement having eased, many amongst the travelers have become new carriers of the virus. In several states, particularly those who are receiving their people working in other states, a bulk of new cases are among those who have been on the move in the last few days. This is true not just of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, but also in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Goa.

Odisha, right now the state with the fastest-growing coronavirus numbers, reported 61 new cases on Thursday, almost all of them among returning workers or their immediate contacts. Odisha now has 672 confirmed cases. At the start of this month, it had less than 150.

Similarly, Bihar, which reported 47 cases on Thursday, has discovered that the positivity rate among its returning workers is way higher than the state average. Of the 4,275 returning migrants randomly tested, 320 were found to have been positive, giving a positivity rate of 7.5 per cent. This is significantly higher than the positivity rate of 2.5 for the entire state. It means that a considerably higher proportion of migrants returning to the state were carrying the virus compared to those who were residing in the state. Bihar has seen a rapid rise in numbers in the last few days, even though its total is just below 1,000 right now. Its doubling rate of cases is much faster than the national average as of now.

Since Monday, 105 of the 117 new infections discovered in Andhra Pradesh, and 67 of 149 in Telangana were among those who were coming back to their homes from other states. That has already led to these two states sounding an alert for everyone who is returning from other places, make special screening arrangements for them.

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Punjab, which had been afflicted with the similar problem a few days ago, with a large number of pilgrims returning from Nanded in Maharashtra having tested positive, seems to have crossed the hump as of now. In the last few days, the number of new cases have come down considerably. On Thursday, the state reported just 11 new cases, after having reported ten the previous day.

In Delhi, an effort is being made to adjust the deaths that have happened in the last few days but were not counted in official bulletins. On Thursday, the Delhi government added nine more deaths to its tally, taking the total to 115. None of these deaths had happened in the previous 24 hours. A massive discrepancy was noticed in the deaths reported in official bulletins, and those that were being reported by the hospitals as reported by The Indian Express.

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