However, the upcoming festival season presents the highest risk to date of spreading the virus. Before Durga Puja, West Bengal is one of the few states where active cases continue to increase. Kerala, the only other major state with an increase in active cases, has already experienced a similar risk. By September, the outbreak in the state had intensified a few days after Onam.
In absolute numbers, daily new infections reported by some states are still massive. Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala reported nearly 200,000 new cases last week. This is 42% of the total for India.
Up to 26 states and union territories have fewer active cases now than a week ago. Kerala has been the biggest hotspot of late, but active cases grew just 13% this week, compared to 48% the previous week.
Six of the 10 districts with the worst spikes of infections in the last week are in Kerala and two in Chhattisgarh. The case load increased more than 20% in 11 of the state’s 14 districts in this period, data from howindialives.com showed. Testing in the state is the highest per million residents, with more than 8 lakh of samples tested in the past two weeks.
The outbreak in Chhattisgarh has slowed despite improved evidence. But deaths are increasing rapidly (19% weekly growth). Typically, a decrease in new cases is reflected in a slowdown in deaths only after a few weeks.
All calculations are based on seven-day moving averages to minimize the effect of volatile and delayed reports. National and state data come from the Union Ministry of Health.
Kerala and Odisha became the latest states to cross 1,000 deaths this week. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka tolls exceeded 10,000 each. Andhra Pradesh (6,319 deaths) now has the fifth highest figure after surpassing Delhi (5,898). The rate of increase in deaths has improved in most states.
With this, India has 111,266 covid-related deaths as of Thursday morning. Among states with at least 1,000 deaths, Kerala (20%), Chhattisgarh (19%) and Odisha (13%) saw the largest increase in their number of victims this week.
Only five states now have a recovery rate of less than 80%, or the proportion of patients who have been discharged. Four of them are in the northeast: Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur. At 69%, Kerala has the lowest recovery rate.
Among the 273 districts with at least 5,000 cases so far, the highest weekly growth was reported by Korba (40%) and Janjgir-Champa (33%) in Chhattisgarh, and Thrissur (33%) in Kerala, according to data from howindialives. com . Deaths increased the most in Bhandara (32%) in Maharashtra, Kolar (25%) in Karnataka and Malappuram (25%) in Kerala.
Among the 10 states with the most active cases, Kerala and Karnataka have performed the most tests per million inhabitants over the past fortnight, and Maharashtra and West Bengal are the fewest, data from covid19india.org showed. The positivity rate, or the probability that a virus test will be positive, has increased in Kerala and Chhattisgarh, but has decreased in all other major states.
The total count of coronavirus patients in India increased to 7,307,097 as of Thursday morning. The country accounted for 20% of the 2.4 million cases reported worldwide during the last week, the highest in the world. After steadily increasing, India’s share of the global death toll has exceeded 10%. In just the past 14 days, the country accounted for 16% of nearly 37,000 deaths, also the highest proportion.
Globally, the coronavirus case count has surpassed 38 million, including 1.1 million deaths and nearly 26.7 million recoveries (36%), data from Johns Hopkins University showed. However, this is just the reported count and could be just a fraction of all infected people.
The search for a vaccine ran into roadblocks this week as two major US drugmakers, Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly, halted trials due to safety risks. Both vaccine trials are in an advanced stage. Last month, another closely watched vaccine trial, that of AstraZeneca in conjunction with the University of Oxford, was stopped.
In India, the daily new cases curve is gradually flattening. But the Durga Puja and Diwali celebrations in the coming weeks will be a massive test for state governments and citizens.
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