India Becomes Second in the World to Cross One Crore Mark in Covid Cases, But Many Experts Believe the Worst May be Over
NEW DELHI, Dec 19: India achieved a dubious distinction on Saturday becoming the second country in the world after the United States to have registered more than one crore (10 million) Corona positive cases.
With the new 25,152 Covid-19 cases reported in the country in the last 24 hours, India’s cumulative total caseload went up to 10004599 (one crore four thousand five hundred ninety-nine). Steadily following the trend set over the past few weeks, India’s active caseload has also fallen to 3.09% of the total active cases.
Even as the county crossed one crore mark in new cases, the total recovered cases have also surpassed 95.5 lakh (95,50,712) improving the recovery rate to 95.46%, which is amongst the highest globally. The gap between Recovered cases and Active cases is steadily increasing and presently stands at 92,41,961.
With the steady decline in the number of new cases in the last two months after the peak of 96,000 cases reported in a day in September, India’s cases per million also remained the lowest in the world. While India’s record on Saturday was 223 new cases per million, it was 21,612 cases in the US, 10,390 in Italy, 3,658 in Brazil, 3,513 in Russia and 2,489 in Turkey.
India could also comparatively breathe easy considering that despite being winter months and the recent religious festivals and elections, the country has not experienced the kind of re-surge in Corona cases the many of the western countries are suffering.
The US has been reporting between 2 lakh and 2.5 lakh cases every day, while Brazil is detecting over 50,000 cases daily. Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Russia are in the midst of a major new surge – with more than 20,000 people getting infected daily in several of these countries.
During its worst period in the middle of September, India was finding over 90,000 infections a day. But following an unexpected turnaround, the number of cases declined consistently. From a peak of over 10 lakh cases in the third week of September, active cases have come down to just about 3 lakh now.
There has been a corresponding drop in the number of coronavirus-related deaths as well. During all of September, more than 1,000 deaths were being reported every day from across the country. That number is now below 400. So far, about 1.45 lakh people are known to have died from the disease in India.
The fact that the downward trend in the detection of new cases has survived the long festival season, state Assembly and local body elections, and the steady removal of restrictions on movement and gatherings of people, has brought hope that the worst may be over.
Since other possible reasons for the fall in numbers – such as low testing or universal adoption of masks – are also ruled out, some experts and scientists are now inclined to believe that the actual disease prevalence in the population could already have reached a very high proportion, may be more than 40 to 50 per cent have already been infected and gained immunity.
Declining numbers, meanwhile, have eased the burden on healthcare workers and the health infrastructure. States like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, which at one point were reporting between 8,000 and 10,000 new cases every day, are now finding cases in hundreds. Kerala is the only state which continues to report around 5,000 cases per day.
The slow of the infection also resulted in taking 29 days in recording the last one million cases to move from 90 lakh to 1 crore. During September and October, India was adding 10 lakh cases in less than two weeks.
According to the union health ministry data posted on Saturday, India has reported more daily recoveries than the daily new cases during the past 24 hours. The trend of more daily recoveries than the daily cases has led to a continuous contraction of India’s Active Caseload which presently stands at 3,08,751 today.
While 25,152 persons in were found to be COVID positive in the country in the past 24 hours, 29,885 new recoveries were registered during the same period. The daily active cases have been following a steadily declining trend. This has led to a net decline of 5,080 cases from the total Active Caseload in the last 24 hours.
India has achieved another landmark milestone in its fight against the global pandemic. The cumulative testing has crossed 16 Cr.
11,71,868 samples were tested in the last 24 hours which has increased India’s total cumulative tests to 16,00,90,514. India’s daily testing capacity has been boosted to 15 lakh.
Comprehensive and widespread testing on a sustained basis has resulted in bringing down the positivity rate. The cumulative Positivity Rate stood at 6.25% on Saturday.
(Manas Dasgupta)
