Updated: December 19, 2020 7:57:22 am
India is only the second country in the world, after the United States, to have more than 10 million confirmed infections with the new coronavirus. (Archive)
Even as the overall Covid-19 situation has improved over the past two months, the pandemic in India crossed a grim milestone on Friday night, with the number of infected crossing the 10 million mark (1 crore).
India is only the second country in the world, after the United States, to have more than 10 million new confirmed coronavirus infections.
However, the epidemic in India appears to be in constant decline, while several countries in Europe and America are going through their worst phase.
The United States has reported between 2 lakh and 2.5 lakh of cases a day, while Brazil detects more than 50,000 cases a day. Germany, the UK, Italy and Russia are in the midst of a major new surge: more than 20,000 people are infected daily in several of these countries.
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During its worst period in mid-September, India encountered more than 90,000 infections a day. But after an unexpected change, the number of cases steadily decreased. From a peak of more than 10 lakh of cases in the third week of September, active cases have dropped to almost 3 lakh now.
There has also been a corresponding drop in the number of deaths related to the coronavirus. Throughout the month of September, more than 1,000 deaths were reported every day across the country. That number is now below 400. So far, around 1.45 lakh people are known to have died from the disease in India.
The fact that the downward trend in the detection of new cases has survived the long season of festivals, the elections of the state assembly and local bodies, and the constant elimination of restrictions on movement and gathering of people , has brought hope that the worst may be over.
Since other possible reasons for the drop in numbers are also ruled out, such as a shortage of tests or the universal adoption of masks, some experts and scientists are now inclined to believe that the true prevalence of the disease in the population may have already reached a very high proportion. , perhaps much higher than serosurveys have suggested.
This would mean that a substantial proportion of the population, possibly 40-50% or more, have already been infected and have gained immunity, providing some protection at the community level to other people. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assumption at this time.
Meanwhile, declining numbers have eased the burden on health workers and the health infrastructure. States like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which at one point were reporting 8,000 to 10,000 new cases every day, are now finding hundreds of cases. Kerala is the only state that continues to report around 5,000 cases per day.
The slowness of the infection has meant that it has taken almost a month for the total confirmed cases to go from 90 lakh to 1 crore. During September and October, India added 10 lakh of cases in less than two weeks.
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