(TibetanReview.net, Aug21’20) – India recorded more than 1.2 million fresh Covid-19 cases in August, higher than in any previous month and the highest count by any country during this month, reported the timesofindia.com Aug 21. Its count of cases in August at 1,207,539 continues to be the world’s highest, with the US in second place (9,94,863 cases till Aug 19) and Brazil third (7,94,115), the report said, citing worldometers.info.
However, with the daily growth rate continuing to slow down, the doubling time of novel Coronavirus cases in India has now dropped to 30 days, reported the indianexpress.com Aug 21. The report noted: “Doubling time is a function of the growth rate. Lower the growth, higher is the doubling time. It is one of the several metrics used to assess the pace at which the epidemic has been spreading in the population.”
The report added: “The ten-day doubling period was crossed in the first week of May, and after that there has been a steady elongation of this time.”
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Whatever may be the case, the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 68,898 new cases and 983 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Aug 21 at 8AM, taking their totals to 2,905,823 cases and 54,849 deaths.
A total of 2,158,946, or 74.39%, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 692,028, or 23.83% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.89%. All there were improvements over the previous day’s numbers.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 68,898, was more than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 62,282, which meant an increase in the number of active cases by 6,616.
Besides being the country with the third highest total number of infections, standing behind the USA and Brazil, India is also the country with the fourth highest number of covid-19 deaths. Only the USA, Brazil, and Mexico have reported more deaths than India.
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Eight states, namely Maharashtra (643,289↑14,647), Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, and Bihar (114,941↑2504) had reported more than 114,000 cases each so far in that order.
Seven other states, namely Telangana, Assam, Gujarat, Odisha,Rajasthan, Kerala, and Haryana had reported more than 50,000 cases each so far in that order.
Seven other states/Union Territories, namely Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Goa had reported more than 13,000 cases each in that order.
Besides, there were 12 other states/Union Territories with a total more than 1,200 cases each, namely Puducherry, Tripura, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Meghalaya, and Sikkim in that order.
Only Mizoram had less than 1000 cases at (895↑22).
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 21,359 (↑326); followed by Tamil Nadu with over 6,200 deaths; Delhi and Karnataka with more than 4,200 deaths each; Andhra Pradesh with more than 3000 deaths; Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal with more than 2,600 deaths each; Madhya Pradesh with over 1,100 deaths; and Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Assam, Kerala, Uttarakhand, and Chattisgarh with between 957 and 168 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 stood at a total of 94 (↑0) so far, of whom 14 were active, 77 had recovered and three had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration as of Aug 21 morning.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 22,688,934 and the deaths 793,864, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 1:57:39 PM on Aug 21, 2020.
