India’s Covid-19 cases to touch 600,000 by Jul 1, to keep increasing after that due to low testing

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India’s Covid-19 cases to touch 600,000 by Jul 1. (Photo courtesy: News18)

(TibetanReview.net, Jun21’20) – It took 78 days for the number of Covid-19 cases in India to reach the first 100,000, but only eight days to add the latest 100,000, noted hindustantimes.com Jun 21. The report said that about 75 per cent of the total infections in India, at nearly 400,000 as of Jun 20 morning, had been reported between May 19 and Jun 20.

“It is only natural that if you test more, more people will test positive… India is currently at the ascending limb of the epidemic. We have not reached the peak [of infections] yet, and in this situation, this is what will happen (more people will test positive),” Dr Lalit Kant, the former head of epidemiology and communicable disease at ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research), was quoted as saying.

The report cited experts a saying the pandemic was now in its third surge of the outbreak – the first being in China, second in Europe and the US, and the latest thriving in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Peru and Chile along with India, Mexico and Russia.

India, which has seen over 400,000 Covid-19 cases by now, would record over 600,000 cases by Jul 1 and the numbers will increase further as a systematic plan and implementation had not happened in the country in a uniform manner to control the spread of the virus, the IANS news service Jun 21 cited a top Indian-origin researcher from University of Michigan in the US has saying.

“India has tested about 0.5 per cent of its population whereas the median level worldwide is around 4 per cent of the population. We are not going to get there very quickly; from 6 million tests to 54 million tests will take a long time. So we need alternatives to RT-PCR testing,” the report quoted Bhramar Mukherjee, professor and chair of biostatistics at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, as saying.

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Meanwhile, India’s Ministry of Health reported 15,413 new cases in the past 24 hours as of Jun 21 at 8 AM and 306 new deaths during that period, taking the totals to 410,461 cases and 13,254 deaths.

A total of 227,756, or 55.48 per cent of the cases, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 169,451.

India has registered over 10,000 cases for the 10th day in a row and a record jump in number of cases for the fourth successive day.

India currently has the fourth highest number of Covid-19 cases after the US, Brazil and Russia. It also has the eighth highest number of deaths from the pandemic.

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The nine worst hit states with more than 10,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 184205 cases after 3,874 fresh cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 56,845 (↑2,396) cases, Delhi with 56,746 (↑3,630) cases, Gujarat with 26,680 (↑539) cases, Uttar Pradesh 16,594 (↑809), Rajasthan 14,536 (↑380), West Bengal 13,531 (↑441), Madhya Pradesh 11,724 (↑142), and Haryana 10,223 (↑480).

Below them were 13 states/Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Karnataka 8,697 (↑416), Andhra Pradesh 8,452 (↑491), Bihar 7,533 (↑352), Telangana 7,072 (↑546), Jammu & Kashmir 5,834 (↑154), Assam 4,904 (↑0), Odisha 4,856 (↑179), Punjab 3,952 (↑120), Kerala 3,039 (↑127), Uttarakhand 2,301 (↑124), Chattisgarh 2,041 (↑13), Jharkhand 1,965 (↑05), and Tripura 1,186 (↑8).

And then there were nine other states/ Union Territories with more than 100 cases, namely Ladakh 836 (↑92), Manipur 777 (↑96), Goa 754 (↑29), Himachal Pradesh 656 (↑37), Chandigarh 404 (↑23), Puducherry 286 (↑0), Nagaland 201 (↑3), Mizoram 140 (↑10), and Arunachal Pradesh 135 (↑32).

Three states/Union Territories with less than 100 cases included Sikkim 70 (↑0), Andaman and Nicobar Islands 47 (↑2), and Meghalaya 44 (↑0).

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 5,984 (↑91), followed by Delhi 2,112 (↑77), Gujarat 1,638 (↑20), Tamil Nadu 704 (↑38), West Bengal 540 (↑11), Madhya Pradesh 501 (↑6), Uttar Pradesh 507 (↑19), Rajasthan 337 (↑4), Telangana 203 (↑5), Haryana 149 (↑5), Karnataka 132 (↑8), Andhra Pradesh 101 (↑5), Punjab 98 (↑6), Jammu & Kashmir 81 (↑6), Bihar 52 (↑2), Uttarakhand 27 (↑1), Kerala 21 (↑0), Odisha 12(↑1), Jharkhand 11 (↑0),  Chattisgarh 11 (↑1), Assam 9 (↑0), Himachal Pradesh 8 (↑0), Chandigarh 6 (↑0), Ladakh 1 (↑0), Meghalaya 1 (↑0), and Tripura 1 (↑0).

Seven States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.

(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)

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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases surged past the 8.5 million mark to reach 8,802,328 while a total of 464,620 had died as of Jun 21 at 2:03:23 PM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

There were 126,963 new cases and 4,364 new deaths during the past 24 hours across 188 countries and regions.

The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (2,255,119), Brazil (1,032,913), Russia (583,879), India (410,451) … China (84,553).

The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were US (119,719), Brazil (49,976), UK (42,674), Italy (34,610), France (29,636), Spain (28,322), Mexico (20,781), India (13,254) … China (4,639).

(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

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