India suffers highest daily Covid-19 infections in five months
INDIA reported the highest daily increase in coronavirus cases in five months on Monday, with the second wave of the disease driven by surging infections in the country’s richest state Maharastra.
A total of 68,020 new coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said. It was the highest daily rise since October 11, according to a Reuters tally.
India has been reporting a spike in cases above the 60,000 mark - for three consecutive days, though Monday’s rise was still below September’s peak of more than 90,000 cases a day.
The total number of cases since the epidemic began a year ago crossed the 12 million mark, making India the hardest hit country outside the United States and Brazil.
Some experts believe the truer figure would be more than 300 million due to insufficient testing, though that has improved.
Daily deaths rose by 291 on Monday and the virus has so far killed 161,843 people in India.
Maharastra, the western state where country’s financial capital Mumbai is located, recorded its highest ever daily case rise with 40,414.
The state is considering imposing a strict lockdown this week. It has already tightened travel restrictions and imposed night curfew in a bid to put a lid on rising cases of infections.
Several states imposed restrictions on public gatherings on Hindu festival Holi and the Muslim Shab-e-Barat or Day of Forgiveness, which both fell at the weekend.
Holi, marking the arrival of Spring, is one of India’s biggest festivals. People traditionally celebrate by smearing each other with different colored powder and singing.
Police in Delhi intensified patrolling to prevent public gatherings and celebrations as India’s capital has been seeing a steady rise in cases. Delhi reported 1,881 cases in the last 24 hours.
Eight Indian states- Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh have account for 84.5 percent of the total cases in the country, the government said in a statement.
There is so far no evidence that the second wave of Covid-19 in the country is due to variants of the virus, but it is possible, said noted virologist Shahid Jameel. He, however, stressed that the sharp rise in coronavirus infections seen recently is mainly because people have stopped following Covid-appropriate behaviour.
In an interview, Jameel, who has won the coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, said the rollout of vaccines has caused a false sense of security among people.
‘But vaccines won’t work unless we take them. As of March 25, only 8.1 million people have taken both doses, which is 0.6 percent of India’s population. Further, 46.4 million people or 3.3 percent of India’s population have taken only one dose, which gives weak or no protection,’ he said.
Jameel further said there is so far no evidence that the second wave is due to variant viruses. ‘But this is possible’. ‘The mortality rate in the second wave appears to be no different. In fact, it appears to be lower than what we saw in August and September 2020, during the first peak,’ said Jameel, who is presently the director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University.
He said the second wave is mainly because there are enough susceptible people in the country and in the past four months most of the people have stopped following Covid-appropriate behavior such as wearing masks and avoiding crowded places.
‘Further, all commercial and recreation activities are back to normal even as the pandemic is still there,’ Jameel said.
Meanwhile, India is still not out of the woods as far as unemployment is concerned after a year when the lockdown was imposed to contain the spread of deadly Covid-19 on March 25 last year as pandemic-induced job loss has not tapered off consistently.
The government had imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of the pandemic but this impacted economic and commercial activities and resulted in job loss and later on the exodus of migrant workers which rocked the entire nation.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data, the unemployment rate was recorded at 6.9 percent in February 2021 which is slightly better than 7.8 percent in the same month last year and 8.8 percent in March 2020, during which lockdown was imposed.
The data showed that the unemployment rate had peaked to 23.5 percent in April and remained at 21.7 percent in May. It started tapering off from June onward when it was recorded at 10.2 percent in the month and further improved to 7.4 percent in July.
However, the unemployment rate again rose slightly to 8.3 in August and improved to 6.7 per cent in September last year, as per CMIE data. In October, unemployment again rose slightly to 7 per cent and then eased to 6.5 per cent in November last year as per the data.
The CMIE data showed that the unemployment rate had risen to 9.1 percent in December 2020 and improved in January to 6.5 percent.
Experts said that the CMIE data indicated improvement in the unemployment scenario from July onwards, but there is a need for consistency which would only come after an increase in buoyancy in the manufacturing and services sectors.