Updated: October 1, 2020 1:36:03 pm
Health workers conduct rapid antigen testing for Covid-19 outside Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad on September 30, 2020 (Express photo: Nirmal Harindran).
Coronavirus cases in India: More than 26 lakh people in India were infected with the new coronavirus in the month of September, which is a 71 percent increase over the number at the end of August.
Unsurprisingly, nearly six lakh of these cases in September were reported in Maharashtra, while Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka contributed 2.6 lakh each. Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kerala and Odisha were the other states that saw their total numbers increase by at least one lakh in September.
Twelve states doubled their total number of cases during this period. The largest increase, in relative terms, was recorded in Kerala Y Chhattisgarh, the two fastest growing states in September. The number of confirmed infections in Chhattisgarh more than tripled in the past month, from about 31,000 at the end of August to more than 1.1 lakh now.
Kerala, which is the fastest growing state at the moment, saw their numbers increase by more than 160 percent, from around 75,000 at the end of August to 1.96 lakh now. A large part of this increase in Kerala has occurred in the past two weeks, during which time it has consistently reported more than 4,000 new cases a day. Indeed, on Wednesday, Kerala set a new record, when it reported more than 8,800 cases. In the last week, almost 48,000 new cases have been detected in the state.
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The states that had the smallest increase during September were Tamil Nadu and Bihar. These two states have slowed throughout the month and their current growth rate has fallen below one percent per day. Tamil Nadu’s numbers grew just under 40 percent in September, from 4.28 lakh to 5.97 lakh.
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Bihar, which showed signs of a large increase in August, increased their numbers by 34 percent in September, from 1.36 lakh to 1.82 lakh. Tamil Nadu and Bihar are among the states that perform well in testing, although Bihar has relied more on rapid antigen testing. But it is not yet clear if the slowdown could be directly attributed to a greater number of tests being carried out.
At least one state that has been running a lot more tests hasn’t shown the same kind of slowdown. Uttar Pradesh has performed the largest number of tests in the country, although most, as in the case of Bihar, are rapid antigen tests, which are not considered as accurate as RT-PCR tests. In fact, on Wednesday, the number of tests in Uttar Pradesh crossed a crore. You are testing more than 1.5 lakhs of samples every day, almost double that in Maharashtra most days. The number of cases in Uttar Pradesh increased by 73 percent in September, from 2.3 lakh to almost four lakh now.
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Coronavirus cases in India in September.
More than 33,000 deaths from coronavirus were reported in September, more than 1,000 a day.
On Wednesday, nearly 87,000 new cases were reported across the country, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 63.12 lakh. More than 52.73 lakh of these, or 83.5 percent, have recovered from the disease. The death toll has reached more than 98,000.
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