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NEW YORK: Global coronavirus cases surpassed 25 million on Sunday (Aug 30) as India set a world record for new daily cases in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The data showed steady global growth as the epicenter of the disease shifts again, with India taking center stage against the United States and Latin America.
India’s single-day count of 78,761 new coronavirus infections on Sunday surpassed the one-day rise of 77,299 reported by the United States in mid-July, according to a Reuters tally.
The increase in India brought the number of cases globally to 25,074,751.
The official number of coronavirus cases globally is now at least five times the number of serious influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to data from the World Health Organization.
READ: India Records World’s Highest Single-Day Increase With Over 78,700 New COVID-19 Cases
Visitors line up at the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum in New York on August 29, 2020 for its reopening after a months-long closure due to the pandemic / (Photo: AFP / Kena Betancur)
Worldwide, there have been more than 840,000 deaths, which is considered a lagging indicator given the virus’s two-week incubation period. That has exceeded the upper range of 290,000 to 650,000 annual influenza-related deaths.
India, the second most populous country in the world, ranks third behind the United States and Brazil in total number of cases, but has consistently surpassed both in new daily cases since August 7.
Despite the growing number of cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been pushing for a return to normal to ease the economic pain of the pandemic, having imposed a strict early closure of the country’s 1.3 billion residents in March.
Latin America is the region with the most infections in the world, although some countries in the region are beginning to show a slight decrease in infections.
In the United States, metrics for new cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and test positivity rates are declining, but tipping points are emerging in the Midwest.
The global rate of new infections has stabilized somewhat. It took about three weeks for the number of cases to increase from 5 million to 25 million. That’s compared to the 19, 24 and 39 days it took, respectively, to add 5 million boxes to the 20 million, 15 million and 10 million marks.
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A man walks near a graffiti made in tribute to health workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on August 18, 2020 (Photo: Reuters / Amanda Perobelli).
The daily new case rate has dropped to around 1.2 percent in August so far. That compared to 1.7 percent in July, 1.8 percent in June, 2.1 percent in May, 4.6 percent in April, and 7.7 percent in March.
Health experts emphasize that official data almost certainly reports fewer infections and deaths, particularly in countries with limited testing capacity.
While the COVID-19 trajectory is still well below the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people and killed at least 10 percent of patients, experts fear that the available data is minimizing the true impact of the pandemic.
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