November 9, 2020 11:25:25 am
RT-PCR test at Trilok Puri in Delhi (Express photo by Prem Nath Pandey)
Explanation of the coronavirus figures in India: The peak of the latest wave of coronavirus infections in Delhi is increasing by the day. With 7,745 new cases detected on Sunday, Delhi climbed a new record and is now also the fastest growing state in the country, having overtaken Kerala.
In fact, in the last week, Delhi has contributed more cases than any state, including Maharashtra and Kerala. More than 46,000 new cases were found in the national capital in the last week, a couple hundred more cases than in Kerala. Maharashtra has detected only about 36,000 cases last week.
With a growth rate of 1.6 percent a day, Delhi is currently growing more than three times faster than the national rate. It is one of the few states that are currently witnessing a increase in their active cases. Delhi has close to 42,000 active cases at the moment, which is lower than just Maharashtra and Kerala.
Top ten states with the highest case load
What is more concerning, however, is the fact that the death toll in the national capital has also risen sharply. In recent days, Delhi has reported more deaths than any other state except Maharashtra. 77 deaths were reported on Sunday, while 79 deaths were recorded the day before. The city has recorded nearly 7,000 deaths so far. Five states, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, have recorded more deaths.
Another state that has been recording a very high death toll relative to its size is Chhattisgarh. In recent weeks, the state has reported between 40 and 60 deaths every day, although this number has been comparatively low this past weekend, with 22 deaths reported on Saturday and 13 on Sunday. About 2,500 people have died so far in Chhattisgarh, which also saw its number of confirmed cases cross two lakhs on Sunday. The state had been growing very fast in the past month, reporting more than 3,000 cases in several days. Daily case detection has now dropped to between 1,500 and 1,700. 📣 Express Explained is now on Telegram
Some 46,000 new cases were detected across the country on Sunday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases so far to 85.53 lakh.
Odisha has also crossed a milestone, with its total number of cases now exceeding three lakhs. A few days earlier, West Bengal had crossed the four lakh mark. While Odisha has slowed down considerably in recent weeks, West Bengal continues to grow at a rapid pace. In fact, among the top states, it is one of the three with a current growth rate of more than one percent a day, the others being Delhi and Kerala.
The greatest improvement has occurred in Maharashtra, where the number of new cases has remained below 6,000 for almost ten days. Two days ago, the state had reported around 6,800 new cases, but that was only because more than 1,800 unreported cases from Nagpur from the months of June to September had been added to the tally. In the past two weeks, the daily number has exceeded 6,000 only twice. At one point in September, Maharashtra had started reporting more than 22,000 cases a day.
The steady decline in cases for over a month has meant that Maharashtra now has less than a lakh of active cases for the first time since the second week of July. At its peak in mid-September, Maharashtra had more than three lakhs of active cases, nearly a third of the entire country. Now it is less than a fifth. The number of active cases fell below one lakh on Saturday and fell further on Sunday. The state now has just over 96,000 active cases.
Some 46,000 new cases were detected across the country on Sunday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases so far to 85.53 lakh. Of these, more than 79.17 lakh, or nearly 93 percent, have recovered from the disease. The number of active cases is approximately 5.09 lakh.
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