Updated: September 1, 2020 4:53:38 pm
Police wearing masks set up barricades on Shivaji Highway and diverted traffic in Pune on August 31, 2020 (Express photo: Ashish Kale).
Coronavirus cases in India: As expected, Pune overtook Delhi Monday to become the city with the highest number of people infected by the new Coronavirus. The city, which had recorded one of the first cases of coronavirus infections in the country, now has more than 1.75 billion people who have been infected at some point.
Pune has been reporting the highest number of cases every day, between 2,000 and 3,000, for the past few weeks. District officials say this was the result of improved testing, and that it was normal for cases to increase because of that, before stabilizing and hopefully declining.
A recent serosurvey in Pune revealed that in parts of the city, more than 50 percent of people may have already been infected with the disease, although most of them were asymptomatic cases and were never detected. This is the highest disease prevalence detected in any city through serological surveys. More than 50 percent prevalence in a population group would imply a slowdown in the rate of transmission, which means that fewer people should be infected every day. However, this slowdown has yet to begin in the city of Pune.
Read also | What do the results of the serosurvey from Mumbai, Delhi and Pune imply?
The city has already had the highest number of active cases in recent weeks, indicating that a large proportion of infections have been recent. That also shows that the epidemic is still on the rise in the city. Pune has more than 50,000 active cases, far more than Mumbai (about 20,000), Delhi (about 15,000) or Chennai (about 13,000).
Interestingly, the five cities with the highest number of infected people account for nearly a third of all coronavirus-related deaths in the country (see table below).
The top five cities with a maximum number of cases
After five days of more than 75,000 detections of new infections, Monday saw a significant drop in daily numbers. Fewer than 70,000 new cases were discovered in the country, and once again this appears to be the result of the usual drop in test numbers on Sunday. Almost all of the states that reported very high numbers in the past five days – Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi – saw their numbers decline.
The Daily Increase in Covid-19 Cases in India
Assam bucked this trend and reported its biggest daily increase so far. The state only recently made its way into the top ten states with the highest caseload. On Monday, it discovered more than 3,200 new cases, bringing the total number of infections to 1.09 lakh. However, the state has a surprisingly low death count. So far, it has only reported 306 coronavirus-related deaths, giving it a death rate of 0.28 percent, which is the lowest in the country for any major state.
Top 10 states with the highest case load
📣 Express explained is now in Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@ieexplained) and stay up to date with the latest
📣 The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay up to date with the latest headlines
For the latest news explained, download the Indian Express app.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
.
