(TibetanReview.net, Sep26’20) – Fresh Covid-19 cases in India on Sep 25 did not show a rise as compared with the past two days despite a steep increase in testing, an indication that the pandemic in the country may be past its peak, at least for now, reported the timesofindia.com Sep 26. Meanwhile the weekly medical journal The Lancent had in its editorial accused the Indian government of putting a “too positive spin” on the Covid-19 situation in the country while also raising concerns about the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) “straying from scientific evidence” to present a more optimistic assessment, reported theprint.in Sep 25.
But the timesofindia.com report said signs of a slowdown in the virus’s transmission were evident from last week itself, when the weekly count of cases had decreased over the previous week for the first time since the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country. However, a big drop in testing in the first three days of this week had led to doubts over what was causing the fall in numbers.
The report said daily cases in India had hit a peak of 98,795 on Sep 16, that the last time the number had crossed 90,000 was on Sep 19. Since then, for the past six days, the daily tally has been below 88,000, it added.
It may also be worth pointing out that the number of active cases has been showing a general declining trend in recent days.
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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 85,362 new cases and 1,089 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Sep 26 at 8AM, taking their totals to 5,903,932 cases and 93,379 deaths.
A total of 4,849,584, or 82.14 %, had recovered, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases to 960,969, or 16.28% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.58%. These were improvements over the previous day’s figures.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 85,362 was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 93,420, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 9,147.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the third highest number of deaths.
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Four states, namely Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka have accumulated more than 550,000 cases each in that order.
Thirteen other states, namely Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, Bihar, Assam, Kerala, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab had reported more than 100,000 cases each so far in that order.
Three other states/ Union Territories, namely Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Jammu & Kashmir had reported more than 69,000 cases each so far in that order.
Six more states/Union Territories, namely Uttarakhand, Goa, Puducherry, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh had reported more than 11,000 cases each in that order.
Besides, there were nine other states/Union Territories with a total more than 1,800 cases each, namely, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Sikkim, and Mizoram in that order.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 34,761 (↑416); followed by Tamil Nadu with more than 9,100 deaths, Karnataka with over 8,400 deaths; Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi with more than 5,100 deaths each; West Bengal with over 4,600 deaths; Gujarat and Punjab with more than 3,100 deaths each; Madhya Pradesh with more than 2,100 deaths; Rajasthan, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, and Telangana with over 1,000 deaths each; Bihar, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Kerala, Assam, and Uttarakhand, with between 878 and 555 deaths each, and so on in that order.
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The total number of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan had remained unchanged at 357 (↑0), of whom 147 were active, 198 had recovered and 12 had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration as of Sep 26.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 32,569,636 and the deaths 988,996, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 1:53 PM on Sep 26, 2020.
