US case trajectory surpasses India’s

NEW DELHI: The trajectory of new cases of the Covid-19 in the United States, which has been climbing with the start of a third wave of infections, has surpassed that of India’s, which has been dropping steadily in the past five weeks.

This means that India is no longer the country reporting the most new infections in the world for the first time since August 8, when it overtook the US to become the world’s largest source of daily Covid-19 cases.

In the week ended Wednesday, the US reported 430,333 new Covid-19 cases (an average of 61,476 cases every day) against 400,299 cases in India (an average of 57,186 daily cases) — the highest and second highest number of daily cases globally.

While the US reported more daily cases than those in India as early as October 15, single-day figures generally fluctuate due to drop in testing over weekends. The seven-day average is a better, and universally accepted measure of a new-case trajectory as it takes into account the weekend drop in numbers and other daily fluctuations.

India’s case trajectory eclipsed the US’S for the first time on August 8, and on August 29, India’s trajectory became the steepest ever recorded by any country, when its seven- day average hit 70,741, eclipsing the peak infection rate in the US during the country’s second wave.

In the past month, the US has been seeing a resurgence of cases in what experts are calling the third wave of infections in the country.

The second wave peaked in the US on July 25 with 69,887 daily infections. It then bottomed out to 35,585 new cases every day around the middle of September, and started rising again.

This was around the same time that the first wave in India peaked. Infections in India have been dropping since they touched a peak of 93,617 on the week ending September 16.