India surpassed Spain To Become 5th Worst Hit “Vishva Guru”
NEW DELHI : India has become the fifth worst corona pandemic-hit country in the world as it surpassed Spain on Sunday by reporting a grand total of 2,41,970 cases. The European country, a COVID-19 epicenter weeks ago, has 2,40,978 cases.
On Saturday morning, the health ministry data said India reported 9,887 new corona virus cases in the last 24 hours in the biggest one-day spike so far. There has been a minor fall in recovery rate compared to Friday, from 48.27 per cent to 48.20 per cent. The number of deaths reported in the last 24 hours is 294, taking the total in India to 6,642.
The country on Friday took over Italy, one of the biggest sufferers of the disease, in terms of total cases. Figures from America’s Johns Hopkins University around Friday midnight showed India at 2,35,769 and Italy at 2,34,531.
Health Ministry reported 9,887 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total to 236,657 and the death toll to 6,642. Most of the new cases are in rural areas following the return of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who left cities and towns after the lock down in late March.
The lock down is now largely being enforced in high-risk areas while authorities have partially restored train services and domestic flights and allowed shops and manufacturing to reopen.
India is now the sixth-worst affected nation in terms of corona virus infection after the United States, Brazil, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. Italy, Peru, Germany and Turkey also find a mention in the list of 10 worst-hit countries by corona virus.
According to WHO, measures taken in India such as the nationwide lock down have had an impact in slowing transmission but the risk of an increase in cases looms as the country opens up. It added that the over 200,000 current corona virus cases in India, a country of over 1.3 billion people, ‘look big but for a country of this size, it’s still modest’.
India is a heterogeneous and huge country with very densely populated cities and much lower density in some rural areas and varying health systems in different states and these offer challenges to the control of COVID-19.
The lock down in India, was first clamped on March 25 and spanned for 21 days, while the second phase of the curbs began on April 15 and stretched for 19 days till May 3. The third phase of the lockdown was in effect for 14 days and ended on May 17. The fourth phase ended on May 31.The country had registered 512 corona virus infection cases till March 24.
India struggles to contain the spike in corona virus COVID-19 cases as several states witness a massive jump in the number of infections. Some states have reported doubling of cases while some have registered a spike of nearly 10 times.
Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit state registering the highest number of cases with a total of 80,229 infections while the death count is more than 2,800. Followed by Tamil Nadu which has a total of 28,694 cases and the death toll is at 232. The number of active cases is 12,700 while the recovered cases are as high as 15,762.
Delhi too as emerged as corona virus’ top hotpots with a total of 26,334 cases, of which 15,311 is active cases, reocovered cases at 10,315 with 708 deaths. Gujarat’s total tally of cases touched 19,094 with 4901 active cases, 13,003 cured cases and 1,190 fatalities.
In Rajasthan, the total number of cases mounted to 10,084, with 2,507 active cases, 7,359 cured cases and 218 deaths.
(With Agency Inputs).
