(TibetanReview.net, Aug05’20) – India recorded the highest count of fresh Covid-19 cases in the world for the second day running on Aug 5 morning while also having reported its most daily deaths from the virus on Aug 4 morning even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) expressed concern that the country wasn’t testing enough, reported the timesofindia.com Aug 4 and 5.
Countries with a positivity rate (number of people found positive out of the total number tested) of over 5% need to have a higher testing rate. India’s current positivity rate hovers between 10.6% and 13% while its testing rate is 350 per million — that’s way below countries like the US, which has a testing rate of 2,280 per million, or even Italy, which has a testing rate of 840 per million, despite having conquered the pandemic, the report cited WHO’s Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan as saying.
However, in the backdrop of a rising Covid-19 graph, the number of active cases in the country decreased by 874 for the first time on Aug 3, data from state governments was cited as revealing.
The drop in active cases means there is less number of people to spread the infection. This happens when the number of recoveries and deaths is higher than fresh cases in a day. However, it remains to be seen whether the trend holds in the coming days, the report said.
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Meanwhile data from India’s Ministry of Health shows that there were 52,509 new cases and 857 new deaths during the past 24 hours as of Aug 5 at 8AM, taking their totals to 1,908,254 cases and 39,795 deaths.
A total of 1,282,215, or 66.31%, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 586,244.
This is the seventh consecutive day the number of daily new cases in India had increased by more than 50,000.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 52,509, was more than the daily number of those who recovered at 51,706.
Besides being the country with the third highest total number of infections, standing behind the USA and Brazil, India has the fifth highest number of deaths from the pandemic. Only the USA, Brazil, the UK, and Mexico have reported more deaths than India.
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Ten states, namely Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Gujarat, and Bihar each have more reported than 50,000 infections so far in that order.
Ten other states, namely, Assam, Rajasthan, Haryana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Jharkhand, and Chattisgarh each have reported more than 10,000 cases so far in that order.
Besides, there were eleven states and Union Territories with a total more than 1,000 cases each, namely Uttarakhand, Goa, Tripura, Puducherry, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Chandigarh in that order.
Finally, there were four other states/ Union Territories with less than 1,000 cases each, namely Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Mizoram in that order.
Only Lakshadweep did not have any Covid-19 case.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 16,142 (↑300), followed by Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, and so on in that order.
Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 18,566,769 and the deaths 701,278, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 5:04:41 PM on Aug 5, 2020.
