(TibetanReview.net, Oct20’20) – Covid-19 cases across the world crossed 40 million on Oct 19 as the onset of winter in the northern hemisphere fuelled a resurgence in the spread of the disease while there have been over 1.1 million confirmed virus deaths reported to date, noted Reuters Oct 20. It added that the pace of the pandemic was continuing to pick up.
In India, however, the growth rate of infections has more than halved — from 92% in the month prior to Sep 18 when cases peaked to 42% since then, a drop of 50 percentage points – reported the timesofindia.com Oct 20.
At least half of India’s 1.3 billion people are likely to have been infected with the novel coronavirus by Feb 2021, helping to slow the spread of the disease, Reuters Oct 19 cited a member of a federal government committee tasked with providing projections as saying that day.
“Our mathematical model estimates that around 30% of the population is currently infected and it could go up to 50% by February,” the report quoted Manindra Agrawal, a professor at the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur and a committee member, as saying.
Meanwhile India posted its lowest daily coronavirus caseload of less than 50,000 in nearly four months on Oct 20 morning.
The continuous decline in the number of new cases has meant that, after two and half months, India has stopped reporting the highest number of cases in the world, noted the indianexpress.com Oct 20. For the last three days, the United States, which is in the midst of a resurgence, has reported more new infections than India. There is a resurgence of cases in several countries of Europe as well, the report noted.
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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 46,790 new cases and 587 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Oct 20 at 8AM, taking their totals to 7,597,063 cases and 115,197 deaths.
A total of 6,733,328, or 88.63%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 748,538, or 9.85% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.52%.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 46,790, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 69,720, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 23,517. Not only has the number of active cases remained below nine lakh for the 11th day, it has also fallen below 8 lakh for the fourth day.
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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Five states, namely Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh have accumulated more than 450,000 cases each in that order.
They were followed by seven other states with more than 200,000 cases each and included, Kerala, Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, Bihar, and Assam in that order.
Six other states, namely Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, and Punjab had reported more than 120,000 cases each so far in that order.
Three other states/ Union Territories, namely Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttarakhand had reported more than 58,000 cases each so far in that order.
Seven more states/Union Territories, namely Goa, Puducherry, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Chandigarh, and Arunachal Pradesh, reported more than 13,000 cases each in that order.
Besides, there were seven other states/Union Territories with a total more than 2,000 cases each, namely Meghalaya, Nagaland, Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Mizoram in that order.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 42,240 (↑125); followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with more than 10,500 deaths each; Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh with more than 6,400 deaths each; Delhi and West Bengal with more than 6,000 deaths each; Punjab with more than 4,000 death, Gujarat with more than 3,600 deaths; Madhya Pradesh with more than 2,700 deaths; Rajasthan, Haryana, Chattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Telangana, Kerala, Odisha, and Bihar with more than 1,000 deaths each; Uttarakhand, Assam, and Jharkhand with between 933 and 842 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 increased to 730 (↑7), of whom 421 were active, 290 had recovered and 19 (↑1) had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as of Oct 20.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 40,433,853 and the deaths 1,118,681, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 3:54 PM on Oct 20, 2020.
