Doctor sees community spread of Covid-19 in India, Delhi continues to see progress

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India seem to be keeping up with the global momentum, reporting yet another daily record which touched nearly 39,000 cases. (Photo courtesy: Bloomberg Quint)

(TibetanReview.net, Jul19’20) – As the World Health Organization (WHO) reported for the second day a record number of daily new Covid-19 infections on Jul 18 at 259,848 cases, India seem to be keeping up with the global momentum, reporting yet another daily record which touched nearly 39,000 cases.

Although the government has not yet admitted it, Dr VK Monga, the Chairman of IMA Hospital Board of India, has no doubt that the pandemic is now showing community spread in India. “This is now an exponential growth. Every day the number of cases is increasing by more than around 30,000. This is really a bad situation for the country. There are so many factors connected with it but overall this is now spreading to rural areas. This is a bad sign. It now shows a community spread,” the ANI Jul 18 quoted him as saying.

He has further said, “Cases are penetrating down into towns and villages where it will be very difficult to control the situation.”

The only positive trend in India for now appears to be that its mortality rate, compared to the world average, is much lower. While globally the mortality rate of the disease is about 4.3 per cent, in India it has dropped to 2.55 per cent, noted indianexpress.com Jul 19.

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The tally of India’s Ministry of Health shows that there was a sharp spike to a record 38,902 new cases and 543 new deaths in the country over the past 24 hours as of Jul 19 at 8AM, taking their totals to 1,077,618 cases and 26,816 deaths.

This is the fourth consecutive day that Covid-19 cases have increased by more than 30,000. It was also the fourth time this week that the daily count of cases in India hit a new all-time high.

A total of 677,423, or 63 per cent, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 373,379.

The daily number of new cases, at 38,902, was substantially more than the daily number of recoveries at 23,672.

India currently has the third highest total number of Covid-19 cases and the eighth highest total number of deaths from the pandemic.

The nine worst-hit states with more than 40,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 300,937 cases after 8,348 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 165,714 (↑4,807) cases, Delhi with 121,582 (↑1,475) cases, Karnataka 59,652 (↑4,537), Gujarat with 47,390 (↑960) cases, Uttar Pradesh 47,036 (↑1,873), Andhra Pradesh 44,609 (↑3,963), Telangana 43,780 (↑1,284), and West Bengal 40,209 (↑2,198).

There were eight other states with more than 10,000 cases: Rajasthan 28,500 (↑711), Haryana 25,547 (↑750), Bihar 25,136 (↑1,547), Assam 22,918 (↑2,272); Madhya Pradesh 21,763 (↑682); Odisha 16,701 (↑591); Jammu & Kashmir 13,198 (↑441), and Kerala 11,659 (↑593).

Besides, there were ten other states/ Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases: Punjab 9,792 (↑350), Jharkhand 5,342 (↑421), Chattisgarh 5,233 (↑269), Uttarakhand 4,276 (↑174), Goa 3,484 (↑180), Tripura 2,654 (↑288), Puducherry 1,894 (↑62), Manipur 1,891 (↑91), Himachal Pradesh 1,457 (↑40), and Ladakh 1,159 (↑8).

Finally, there were seven other states/ Union Territories with less than 1,000 cases: Nagaland 978 (↑22), Chandigarh 700 (↑40), Arunachal Pradesh 650 (↑41), Meghalaya 418 (↑15) cases, Mizoram 284 (↑2), Sikkim 275 (↑9), and Andaman and Nicobar Islands 198 (↑4).

Lakshadweep and Dadra Nagar Haveli remain the only States /Union Territories without any Covid-19 case.

Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 11,596 (↑144), followed by Delhi 3,597 (↑26), Tamil Nadu 2,403 (↑88), Gujarat 2,122 (↑16), Uttar Pradesh 1,108 (↑24), Karnataka 1,240 (↑93), West Bengal 1,076 (↑27), Madhya Pradesh 706 (↑9), Andhra Pradesh 586 (↑52), Rajasthan 553 (↑7), Telangana 409 (↑6), Haryana 344 (↑17), Punjab 246 (↑7), Jammu & Kashmir 236 (↑5), Bihar 208 (↑7), Odisha 86 (↑3), Assam 53 (↑2), Uttarakhand 52 (↑1), Jharkhand 46 (↑0), Kerala 40 (↑2), Puducherry 28 (↑3), Chattisgarh 24 (↑1), Goa 21 (↑0), Chandigarh 12 (↑1), Himachal Pradesh 11 (↑0), Tripura 5 (↑2), Arunachal Pradesh 3 (↑0), Meghalaya 2 (↑0), and Ladakh 1 (↑0).

Five States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.

(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)

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Meanwhile, Delhi continued to report progress in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. For 17 of the last 20 days, including 11 in a row now, the number of people recovering from the infection had remained higher than newly detected infections — no other state had come close to such a trend, noted timesofindia.com Jul 20.

The national capital’s tally of fresh Covid-19 cases on Jul 18 was 1,475, which was the eighth consecutive day it reported cases in the range of 1,000 to 2,000, compared to above or around 3,000 in June. Its 26 deaths each on Jul 17 and 18 were the lowest single-day Covid-19 fatality counts since Jun 9, the report noted.

The great improvement in the situation in Delhi, especially the effect of reduction in active cases, was visible at the Covid facilities, especially the hospitals where nearly three out of four beds earmarked for Covid-19 were lying vacant on Jul 19, reported timesofindia.com Jul 19.

Delhi has a total of 15,745 Covid beds in hospitals. Of this, data shows only 3,635 (23%) were occupied on Jul 18, the report said.

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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases had surged past the 14.11 million mark to reach 14,301,124 while a total of 602,315 had died as of Jul 19 at 02:04:51 PM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (3,711,835), Brazil (2,074,860), India (1,077,781), Russia (770,311), South Africa (350,879), Peru (349,500), Mexico (338,913),  Chile (328,846), UK (295,632),  … China (85,314).

The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were the US (140,120), Brazil (78,772), the UK (45,358), Mexico (38,888), Italy (35,042), France (30,155), Spain (28,420), India (26,816) … China (4,644).

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