Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
WORLD’S WORST OUTBREAK 24 die in Nashik after oxygen tank leak in Covid hospital
India overtakes US in most cases recorded in a single day and the highest 7-day case trajectory seen in any country during the Covid-19 pandemic
NEW DELHI: With 315,909 new cases of Covid-19 in India on Wednesday, the country broke not only all its previous daily records, but also earned the grim distinction of reporting the most single-day infections in any country ever.
After Wednesday’s tally, the seven-day average of new cases in the country now stands at 264,838 a day – higher even than America’s third wave, which peaked at 255,961 cases a day for the week ending January 11. This means that India is not only the largest outbreak in the world right now, but also the largest outbreak ever recorded in the world.
A total of 2,102 people lost their lives to the viral disease across India on Wednesday, also the single-day record for the country, as the relentless expansion of the outbreak under the second wave continued to spark shortages of hospital beds and other crucial supplies such as oxygen and medicines.
Till Wednesday, 15,924,697 confirmed Covid-19 infections and 184,693 deaths have now been reported across the country, according to HT’s dashboard.
The previous record for most cases in a single day anywhere in the world was set when the US, which is the world’s worsthit country with 32.5 million cases and 582,000 deaths, reported 307,581 new cases on January 8, 2021, according to global case data tallied by worldometers.info.
The most worrying factor right now remains how fast daily cases are continuing to grow, and how the trajectory is exhibiting no clear signs of approaching a peak still.
The country’s daily case tally crossed the 100,000 mark for the first time on April 6 when 115,320 new infections were reported. It just took another nine days for the daily case tally to breach the 200,000 mark for the first time (there were 216,913 new cases on April 15). From there, it took only six days to cross the 300,000 mark.
The daily case trajectory has now grown 62% in the last week.
If this rate of case increase continues, then the country is on the pace to be reporting an average of half a million cases every day in as little as 10 days, shows data.
The average positivity rate – the proportion of tests that return positive for Covid-19 – has now soared to 17% in the past week, the highest ever recorded in the country.
DAILY CASES IN INDIA
NEW DEATHS IN INDIA
PUNE: Twenty-four Covid-19 patients died of oxygen deprivation in Nashik in north Maharashtra on Wednesday after an oxygen tank leak led to a malfunctioning of ventilators and oxygen support equipment at Dr Zakir Hussain Hospital.
State health minister Rajesh Tope said the leak was on account of a fault in the tank’s valves that caused the prescribed oxygen pressure to reduce, leading to oxygen deprivation.
The hospital, a civic-run entity, was treating 157 Covid patients, of which 131 were on oxygen support and 15 were on ventilators.
Though the hospital’s capacity is 150, Nashik’s medical infrastructure has been overwhelmed by the second wave of Covid-19. On April 20 alone, the district reported nearly 4,000 Covid-19 cases and 48 deaths.
Its overall caseload stood at 248,991 with 2,478 fatalities. The district’s active caseload on April 20 was 42,242. “The coronavirus crisis has plunged the country into a vicious cycle of misfortune,” said Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
“There is a shortage of oxygen, medicine, and beds at various places, and people are dying. In all of this, the news of the accident that led to the death of 22 patients [2 succumbed later] is shocking and heartbreaking. I have no words to express my grief.”