India’s Covid-19 second wave rolling back almost as fast as it rolled in

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Medical workers treat patients infected with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a hospital in New Delhi. (Photo courtesy: Yahoo)

(TibetanReview.net, May25’21) – Even as its daily new and active cases continue their declining trends, India passed two sad milestones in the struggle against covid-19 over the past week: the official number of deaths from the pandemic crossed 300,000 and daily fatalities topped a record 4,500. And epidemiologists agree that a full tally would put India far ahead of America and Brazil in the dismal rivalry for the country with the most people killed by covid-19, said the economist.com May 24.

Even so, the virus’s vicious second wave is rolling back almost as fast as it rolled in, the report noted.

The country recorded less than 2 lakh fresh Covid-19 cases on May 24 for the first time in 40 days. The daily death toll too was the lowest in 27 days, noted the timesofindia.com May 25.

Also, cases fell for the second straight week ending Sunday (May 23), registering a steeper drop of 22% than in the previous seven days (16%), in another indication that the second wave of the pandemic in the country was now firmly on the wane, the report noted.

However, deaths from the virus continued to rise. In the week gone by (May 17-23), 29,331 fatalities coming to light, up from 28,334 recorded in the previous week, the report said.

Also, the daily Covid-19 positivity rate had reduced and now stood at 9.54%, while the single-day recoveries continued to outnumber the new cases for the 12th consecutive day, another timesofindia.com report May 25 cited the country’s Health Ministry as saying that day.

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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that the number of new cases had further fallen to 196,427, with the daily new deaths also having fallen sharply to 3,511 in the past 24 hours recorded on May 25 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 26,948,874 cases and 307,231 deaths respectively.

Total recoveries have continued to improve to reach over 24 million (24,054,861, or 89.26%) while active cases have further declined to reach over 2.58 million (2,586,782, or 9.60%). However, the case fatality rate has remained at 1.14%

All but two, namely Tamil Nadu and Assam, of the 24 states with total caseloads of more than 100,000 have reported varying levels of decline in active cases.

The active caseload was at its lowest at 1,35,926 on Feb 12 comprising 1.25% of the total infections.

The country reported its highest ever daily new cases at 4,14,188 on May 7. It has been below three lakh since May 17.

Fourteen states have more than 50,000 active cases, namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, and Assam.

India is currently the country with the world’s second highest total number of Covid-19 cases after the USA, and the third highest total number of deaths after the USA and Brazil.

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The cumulative total of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India and Nepal has remained unchanged at 4,188, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) on its Tibet.net website May 25. Of them 2,493 had recovered while 1,589 were active. The number of those who have died was 106.

Himachal Pradesh has extended its Covid-19 curfew until the end of this month.

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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled over 167 million (167,345,338) and the deaths over 3.47 million (3,474,656), according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of May 25, 2021 at 2:50 PM.

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