(TibetanReview.net, Jul24’20) – New daily Covid-19 infections in India are now increasing in leaps, touching nearly 50,000 this morning, with states having big caseloads leading the way and even those with smaller number of cases also reporting relatively big increases, according to Indian media reports Jul 24. India is now adding 100,000 almost every two days, noted tribuneindia.com Jul 24. The highest spike in cases was reported from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. Delhi remains the lone exception among the high-load states, reporting continuous improvement in situation over many days.
While the country remains at third position, behind the USA and Brazil, in the number of infections, it has now edged out France to become the country with the sixth most number of Covid-19 deaths after going past Spain two days ago.
The tally of India’s Ministry of Health shows that there were 49,310 new Covid-19 cases – the highest ever thus far – and 740 new deaths during the past 24 hours as of Jul 24 at 8AM, taking their totals to 1,287,945 cases and 30,601 deaths.
A total of 817,209, or at 63.45 per cent, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 440,135.
The daily number of new cases, at 49,310, was substantially more than the daily number of those who recovered at 34,602.
The nine worst-hit states with more than 40,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 347,502 cases after 9,895 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 192,964 (↑6,472) cases, Delhi with 127,364 (↑1,041) cases, Karnataka 80,863 (↑5,030), Andhra Pradesh 72,711 (↑7,998), Uttar Pradesh 58,104 (↑2,516), Gujarat with 52,477 (↑1,078) cases, West Bengal 51,757 (↑2,436), and Telangana 50,826 (↑1,567).
There were nine other states with more than 10,000 cases: Rajasthan 33,220 (↑886), Bihar 31,980 (↑1,611), Haryana 28,975 (↑789), Assam 28,791 (↑1,390); Madhya Pradesh 25,474 (↑632); Odisha 21,099 (↑1,264); Jammu & Kashmir 16,429 (↑718), Kerala 16,110 (↑1,078), and Punjab 11,739 (↑438).
Besides, there were ten other states/ Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases: Jharkhand 6,975 (↑490), Chattisgarh 6,254 (↑286), Uttarakhand 5,445 (↑145), Goa 4,350 (↑174), Tripura 3,656 (↑207), Puducherry 2,420 (↑120), Manipur 2,115 (↑55), Himachal Pradesh 1,834 (↑109), Ladakh 1,210 (↑4), and Nagaland 1,174 (↑90).
Finally, there were six other states/ Union Territories with less than 1,000 cases: Arunachal Pradesh 991 (↑42), Chandigarh 800 (↑7), Meghalaya 534 (↑20) cases, Sikkim 460 (↑22), Mizoram 332 (↑15), and Andaman and Nicobar Islands 240 (↑19).
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 12,854 (↑298), followed by Delhi 3,745 (↑26), Tamil Nadu 3,232 (↑88), Gujarat 2,252 (↑28), Karnataka 1,616 (↑97), Uttar Pradesh 1,289 (↑26), West Bengal 1,255 (↑34), Andhra Pradesh 884 (↑61), Madhya Pradesh 780 (↑10), Rajasthan 594 (↑11), Telangana 447 (↑9), Haryana 378 (↑6), Jammu & Kashmir 282 (↑9), Punjab 277 (↑8), Bihar 217 (↑0), Odisha 114 (↑6), Assam 70 (↑6), Jharkhand 67 (↑3), Uttarakhand 60 (↑3), Kerala 50 (↑5), Puducherry 34 (↑3), Chattisgarh 30 (↑1), Goa 29 (↑1), Chandigarh 13 (↑0), Himachal Pradesh 11 (↑0), Tripura 10 (↑1), Meghalaya 4 (↑0), Arunachal Pradesh 3 (↑0), and Ladakh 2 (↑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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In Delhi, the positivity rate came down to 5.7 percent on Jul 23 with only 1,041 out of 18,226 samples testing positive in 24 hours, reported timesofindia.com Jul 24. This was down from 6.1 percent the day before.
The report noted that the positivity rate in the city had been going down consistently – from 31 per cent in the second week of June to 11 per cent between June 29 and July 5. This week, it has remained in the range of 6-5.7 per cent.
The report cited AIIMS director Randeep Guleria as saying that if this trend holds for a few more days, it could be conclusively said that the outbreak has been controlled.
He has noted, “WHO guidelines also say that if the positivity rate is 5 per cent or less, then the disease spread has been controlled. Delhi seems to have achieved that.” He felt that new cases were likely to decline further in the coming days.
The report also cited Dr S K Sarin, who heads one of the committees monitoring Covid-19 management in the state, as saying that not only the positivity rate but the R0 or reproduction number of the infection also had reduced to less than one in the city.
“If the R0, which refers to the average number of people that an infected person could spread the virus to, is more than two, it means the infectivity rate is very high. When the R0 is one, it means the infection has plateaued. But in Delhi’s case, the R0 has reduced to less than one, meaning the spread of infection is on a downward spiral and we may see further decline in new cases,” he was quoted as saying.
Delhi currently has only 16,031 active cases, compared to its total of 127,364 infections thus far.
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases had surged past the 14.71 million mark to reach 15,513,151 while a total of 633,449 had died as of Jul 24 at 02:04:49 PM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were thus 273,346 new cases and 9,791 new deaths during the past 24 hours or so across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (4,038,863), Brazil (2,287,475), India (1,288,108), Russia (793,720), South Africa (408,052), Peru (371,096), Mexico (370,712), Chile (338,759), UK (298,731), … China (86,045).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were the US (144,305), Brazil (84,082), the UK (45,639), Mexico (41,908), Italy (35,092), India (30,601), France (30,185), Spain (28,429) … China (4,649).
