The grim milestone was reached on Thursday, when India recorded 46,260 cases, bringing the total to 90,03,800. This was the highest daily count in 8 days, in part due to an increase in testing that had fallen dramatically in recent days. The day’s death toll, 589, was the highest in 14 days.
The latest increase of one million in 22 days means that the spread in the country has been cut in half since the peak of the pandemic in mid-September, when it only took 11 days for cases to jump from four million to five million. Only the first million cases took more days than the last million.
Despite the steady drop in numbers since then, India still recorded the second highest number of new cases in the world in November. The country has reported just over 8.2 lakh in the month so far, second only to the United States’ November case count of 24.8 lakh. France had the third highest account with 7.3 lakh, followed by Italy (6.2 lakh), the United Kingdom (4.4 lakh), Poland (4.3 lakh) and Brazil (4.3 lakh). At 9,937, the death toll from the virus in India in November so far was the third highest in the world. The United States recorded 20,829 deaths, followed by 10,133 in France, with Italy (8,896) and Iran (8,563) in fourth and fifth places, respectively.
The 46,260 new cases detected Thursday came mainly from 10.3 lakh tests conducted in the country the day before. This was the first time in six days that the test numbers had exceeded 10 lakh. Testing had dropped sharply in the country due to Diwali and other festivals, in addition to the usual drop on weekends.
The number of new cases increased in most states, with Delhi again reporting the highest numbers (7,546) in the country.
The capital also recorded more than 90 deaths for the eighth consecutive day. Gujarat reported 1,340 new cases, the highest daily number in the state since October 3.
Maharashtra also witnessed a considerable increase in new infections. Maharashtra added 5,535 cases to bring its total count to 17,63,055. Kerala was one of the few major states where Thursday’s cases saw a drop from the previous day.
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