Updated: October 2, 2020 3:16:10 pm
Medical personnel wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suits, manipulate the body of a patient who died of Covid-19 in Agartala. (Express photo: Abhisek Saha)
Coronavirus cases in India: Coronavirus-related deaths in India have almost touched a lakh now. As on Thursday, 99,773 deaths have been registered in the country. That already represents about 10 percent of all registered coronavirus deaths in the world.
In fact, on a daily basis, India contributes between 15 and 25 percent of global deaths these days. Globally, between 4,000 and 6,000 deaths are reported every day, while India has consistently reported more than 1,000 deaths for more than a month. Even the United States, the only country that has recorded more coronavirus deaths than India, has been reporting considerably fewer deaths now, in some days less than 300.
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However, deaths per million people are still very low in India, almost half the world average. So far, only about 72 deaths per million inhabitants have occurred in the country, while globally 131 people have died per million inhabitants. That has led to questions about the authenticity of the death figures in India. Considering the large number of cases in India and the relatively poor health infrastructure, the death toll was expected to be much higher. On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump, in an effort to uphold his own government’s track record in minimizing the loss of life due to the disease, suggested that India was not reporting death figures.
In fact, most scientists and health experts also believe that deaths in India might be somewhat underestimated, but no one is quite sure of the extent of this underreporting. Daily reports of deaths from coronavirus were very stable in the month of September, between 1,000 and 1,200, but there has also been no increase in new infections. For most of September, 80,000 to 90,000 new cases have been reported every day. Any increase in cases is generally reflected in death figures after an interval of about two weeks.
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The case fatality rate (CFR), or the number of deaths out of the total number of confirmed infections, has been slowly declining for more than three months. In the month of September, the CFR fell from 1.76% to 1.56%.
A one-of-a-kind study on the coronavirus situation in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, published in Science on Wednesday, sheds some light on why the death rate might be lower in India compared to other countries. The study, which was based on data from about 85,000 infected people in these two states, found that the death rate in the older population was much lower than that seen in some developed countries. Even among people in the age group 85 and older, the death rate from coronavirus was only 16.6 percent, almost half of what some countries have reported. In the United States and European countries, deaths have increased dramatically in the oldest age groups 60 years and older. In India it is also higher than in younger age groups, but not as high as in other countries.
Gautam Menon, professor of biology and physics at Ashoka University, says that if these numbers were correct, this finding could be conveying something very significant about the nature of the disease in the Indian population. In relative terms, the disease could be killing fewer people in India.
Daily Increase in Covid-19 Cases in India
1,095 deaths were reported across the country on Thursday. More than 81,000 new cases have been detected, bringing the total number of people who have tested positive so far to 63.94 lakh. Of those, 53.52 lakh, or about 84 percent, have already recovered from the disease.
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Several states touched new milestones on Thursday. The total number of cases exceeded 14 lakhs in Maharashtra and seven lakhs in Andhra Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh touched the figure of four lakh, while Kerala, the fastest growing state in the country at the moment, saw its number surpass two lakh, the ninth state to do so. For the second day in a row, Kerala registered more than 8,000 new cases. The state also reported 29 coronavirus-related deaths, the highest on record so far. The state has recorded 805 deaths among coronavirus-positive patients so far, including those who have been assessed by the state government as deaths from comorbidities.
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