Record jump in coronavirus cases
INDIA recorded its highest daily deaths from the coronavirus in more than a month on Tuesday (8), even as new infections slowed, data from the health ministry showed.
The health ministry said 1,133 people had died of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, the highest since July, taking total mortalities to 72,775. But new daily cases were at 75,809, the lowest in a week.
India overtook Brazil in coronavirus infection numbers on Monday (7), making it second only to the United States after a record jump, but the government resumed underground train services and announced plans to re-open the Taj Mahal more than six months after it was shut.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government, faced with a pandemic that is showing no sign of abating, has chosen to end most curbs in a bid to resuscitate an economy in deep trouble after a severe lockdown.
The world’s secondmost populous country posted more than 90,000 cases on Monday, taking its tally past 4.2 million, more than 68,000 ahead of Brazil.
At current rates, India could exceed the US figure of 6.2 million by next month as the disease spreads from Delhi and Mumbai to the vast hinterland where two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people live, experts say.
“It’s becoming a double burden now,” said Rajib Dasgupta, a professor of community health at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. “The urban areas are not slowing down, and rural areas are picking up.”
India’s death toll, however, stands at 71,642, far behind the nearly 193,000 dead in the United States and 126,000 in Brazil. The government said the high recovery rates show its strategy of testing, tracing and treatment is working.
Virologist Shahid Jameel, who heads the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, said the key factor to watch is the growth rate in infections, which he called “quite alarming”.
“Over the past two weeks, the... average has moved from about 65,000 cases per day to about 83,000 cases per day, that is about a 27 per cent increase over two weeks or about two percent per day,” Jameel said.
India has been testing more than 10 million people per day on average, with plans to ramp it up further.
The Indian Council of Medical Research, the scientific agency leading the government’s response, last Friday (4) revised the testing criteria, allowing anyone to get a test without a doctor’s letter.
Jameel said the move was overdue.
“This will uncover more asymptomatic people, who are the real source of this expansion in India. There should also be more testing in rural districts and villages, since over two-thirds of the cases are coming from there,” he said.
Fighting the virus is straining medical facilities around the country. Doctors at Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital, with the largest private Covid-19 facilities in the Indian capital, said they are exhausted and facing staff shortages after nearly six months of relentless work.
There were few commuters as New Delhi resumed metro rail services after a break of more than six months, however.
Partial metro train services also opened in Ahmedabad, Lucknow and several other places, after nearly six months of suspension over the pandemic.
The Taj Mahal will reopen on September 21, local authorities said, after its previously scheduled re-opening in July was postponed because of high infection numbers in the area.