NEW DELHI: India on Friday became the second country in the world after the United States to register a confirmed crore (10 million) COVID-19 cases even as the pandemic continued to recede in the country.
In India, it took 29 days for cases to rise from nine million to 10 million, making this the slowest increase since the first million cases. Even the average daily deaths during these 29 days were the lowest after the first million. India’s Covid numbers have been falling for three months, since the number of cases surpassed five million on September 15.
The country’s total number of cases crossed the grim one-million-million milestone after 27,022 new infections brought the tally to 1,00,04,893 on Friday night. The United States has registered more than 1.7 million rupees so far, while Brazil He is in third place with a count of over 71 lakh. Both countries have registered a much higher number of cases and deaths than India in recent days.
Deaths per million in India are 104, the second lowest among the 20 most affected countries in the world. Only Indonesia, which currently ranks 20th in total number of cases, has had fewer deaths per million at 71.
In terms of daily cases, India peaked almost exactly three months ago, on September 17, when 98,795 new infections were recorded in a single day. In these three months, cases have increased for a few weeks in a stretch in some states such as Delhi, but the general trend has been a steady decline despite the festive season and further relaxations in restrictions in all states.
Some of the most dramatic declines in cases were seen in the southern states, which, along with Maharashtra, were one of the major contributors to the rise of Covid in India from July to October. When India’s case load reached nine million on November 19, southern cases had a 37% share of the total count. In the last million cases, the southern share dropped to 27% despite figures in Kerala it remains relatively high.
India remains one of only two nations among the world’s 10 worst affected countries that has yet to see a second spike in cases. The other country is Argentina. The reasons why India’s numbers have been falling steadily for three months are now still the subject of speculation.
The last national serosurvey, the results of which are publicly available, was carried out in August. He said that 6.6% of Indians aged 10 years or older had had the infection. That meant, in absolute numbers, around 6.9 crore of Indians (aged 10 and over) had been infected in August, as there are around 105 crore of Indians in that age group.
Only the latest survey will reveal where the figures lie in the most recent months, but the figure is unlikely to be high enough for herd immunity to begin, except perhaps in some parts of the country.
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