India’s Covid-19 count crossed the grim 1 crore milestone as the deadly pathogen continues to spread in the world’s second most populous nation, albeit at a slower pace.
The South Asian nation added 25,152 fresh infections in the past 24 hours, bringing the total count to 1,00,04,599, according to the Health Ministry update at 8 a.m. on December 19. This includes 9,550,712 recoveries and 1,45,136 deaths. In the last 24 hours, 29,885 patients have recovered and 347 have succumbed to the disease. The number of active cases in India stood at 3.08,751.
Home to around 130 crore people, it took India 231 days to reach the 50 lakh mark and just 94 days to double it to 1 crore. India is only behind the United States, with 17,459,296 cases in total, the highest number in the world.
Once it came close to surpassing the United States as the country with the highest number of cases, India’s growth rate slowed in the last two months. In recent weeks, it has reported fewer than 30,000 new confirmed cases a day.
It is now the fourth fastest growing outbreak in the world. The United States is adding more than 2 lakh of cases on average over the last week, while Brazil, the second-largest outbreak, added more than 46,000 cases and Russia added 27,000 cases.
India, by comparison, has added more than 26,000 new infections on average in the last week.
