10 million Covid+, but India on recovery road

NEW DELHI: India on Friday became the second country in the world to see the total number of Covid-19 infections surpass 10 million, although this comes at a time when the country is at the best position in months in its fight against the pandemic, and with the roll-out of a vaccine imminent.

The only other country to have crossed this mark is the US, which did so on November 7, and which is currently in the grips of a strong third wave of the pandemic that has taken daily cases and deaths, as well as hospitalisations to record highs. The US has seen 17,661,064 cases and 318,522 deaths to date.

In contrast, almost all of India’s indicators are exhibiting positive signs – the rate of new cases and deaths are the lowest in at least five months and have dropped over 70% from peak of the first wave, and the positivity rate is the lowest ever recorded.

India ended Friday with 10,004,807 cases, 145,188 deaths, and a cumulative positivity rate of 6.3%.

The global battle against the disease has received a major boost in the last two weeks as two countries – the United States and United Kingdom – have started the rollout of the first Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said on Thursday it is working “rapidly” to give emergency use authorisation to a second vaccine candidate developed by Moderna Inc. An approval was expected later on Friday, US time.

In India, Pfizer is among three companies that have sought an early approval for a coronavirus vaccine.

The country’s drugs regulator is assessing these applications, and has asked the other two – Serum Institute of India (which filed for the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate) and Bharat Biotech to present more data. Pfizer is slated to make a presentation to the agency soon, following which its assessment will proceed.

The viral disease that began in Wuhan, China, a year-and-a-bit ago has infected at least 75 million people around the world and killed 1.7 million people, although experts say that both numbers are likely underestimations.

One in every eight people infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, is from India, but the country fares better in terms of deaths. Its case fatality rate (CFR) — the proportion of infected people who have died from the disease — is 1.45%, which is not only better than the global average of 2.22%, but also better than other countries such as the US (1.8%) and Brazil (2.60%) that have been severely hit by the disease.