India crosses 2L Covid mark, 1L active cases

Coronavirus cases crossed the two-lakh mark and active cases went past the one-lakh mark in India on Tuesday, 70 days after the lockdown was imposed to slow the spread of the highly infectious pathogen.

The country had registered one lakh cases on May 19 — 108 days after the first case was reported on January 30. It took just 15 days for the infections to double to 2,07,082, registering an average 7,139 cases a day.

If this doubling rate sustains further, India could have four lakh cases in the next 15 days and eight lakh cases by the end of this month.

By the end of this month, India could have the fourth or third largest number of cases in the world. The United States and Brazil have the world’s largest and the second largest number of

Coronavirus cases, followed by Russia, Spain, the UK and Italy.

Lav Agarwal. joint secretary in the health ministry, claimed that it is wrong to just look at the total number of cases and the the population of other countries also should be taken into account. “About 14 most affected countries with a cumulative population almost equal to that of India have reported 55.2 times more Covid-19 deaths and 22.5 times more cases,” he said.

However, India does not figure even among the top-100 countries when it comes to tests per one lakh population.

Though India’s preventive measures have been “very effective”, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) scientist Nivedita Gupta said the country was very far away from the peak — suggesting that the rise in the cases will continue further.

She said ICMR is conducting a sero-survey to assess the extent of spread of Covid-19 and results will be out by the end of this week or early next week.

The number of active cases reached 1,00,205 on Tuesday, according to covid19india.org. This places India at the fourth spot in the world on this count. Only three countries have more active cases than India — the United States with 11,42,610, Brazil with 2,90,536, and Russia with 2,31,719 — according to data on the datagathering website worldometers.

● THE NUMBER of Coronavirus cases have doubled from one lakh on May 18 to two lakh on June 2 in just 15 days.

● IF THIS DOUBLING rate sustains further, India could have four lakh cases in the next 15 days and eight lakh cases by the end of this month.