India surpasses Brazil in Covid-19 cases

INDIA overtook Brazil to become the country with the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world as infections continue to accelerate in this country of more than 1.3 billion people.

India added 90 802 cases – a fresh global record in the pandemic – in the last 24 hours, pushing its total past 4.2 million. Only the US, with 6.2 million cases, has recorded more. Brazil had 4.1 million cases as of Sunday night.

More than 71 000 people in India have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, making it the worst-affected nation in Asia.

Unlike the US and Brazil, where the number of new cases has eased in recent weeks, India’s outbreak shows no sign of peaking. Since early August, India has been reporting the highest daily increases in cases in the world.

Infections have spread from major cities to every corner of the country, including to rural areas that are poorly equipped to test and treat patients.

Earlier this spring, India instituted the world’s largest lockdown to try to stem the pandemic. But the restrictions caused economic devastation and failed to reverse the trajectory of the outbreak. In early June, the government changed course.

Jayaprakash Muliyil, a leading Indian epidemiologist, predicted that India’s daily reported cases will continue to rise in coming weeks. He estimates that the daily cases could double over the next month before retreating.

He criticised the government for implementing a harsh nationwide lockdown, calling it a “waste” that hurt the economy and people’s livelihoods. The lockdown “was a cruel joke played on our poor in the name of Covid”.

Now nearly all the prior shutdown measures have been lifted, although schools remain closed and large gatherings are still prohibited. Yesterday, the subway system in New Delhi, India’s capital, started transporting passengers again for the first time in more than five months.

As the country has reopened, coronavirus cases have surged. Testing has also expanded significantly, although the number of tests remains low on a per capita basis compared to other countries.

Coronavirus is only one of several battles India is fighting. Crippled by the lockdown, India’s economy shrank by 24% in the second quarter over the same period a year earlier, the largest drop ever recorded and the worst contraction of any major economy.

Meanwhile, India is also grappling with a major crisis on its border with China. In June, the two countries engaged in their deadliest clash in nearly 50 years. Thousands of troops from both countries remain deployed at the disputed frontier and talks have failed to lower tensions.

Indian government says as testing increases, so too will cases. It points out that India fares well compared to some countries on measures of mortality from the virus. India has recorded about 50 deaths per million people due to Covid-19, far lower than in either Brazil or the US, where the same figure is more than 500. |