(TibetanReview.net, May15’21) – Despite modest improvements in overall numbers in recent days in terms of daily new cases, recoveries, active cases and positivity, the Covid-19 situation in India continues to be grim even as the country expects to be invade by a third wave of the pandemic in the near future. The situation in India remains hugely concerning, with several states continuing to see a worrying number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths, the PTI news service May 14 cited WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as saying, warning that the pandemic’s second year will be “far more deadly” than the first for the world.
India, meanwhile, hopes to have vaccinated its entire adult population of 950 million by December. “We have all expectations and are fully confident of being able to achieve the goal of vaccinating the above 18 population by year-end,” the timesofindia.com May 15 quoted a senior government official as saying.
The government has said a rapid scale-up of vaccine availability from next month will make achieving this target possible. This will hopefully blunt the sting of a feared third wave of the pandemic which first broke out in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 and now has a more contagious Indian variant as well.
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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 326,098 new Covid-19 cases and 3,890 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours recorded on May 15 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 24,372,907 cases and 266,207 deaths respectively.
A total of over 20.43 million (20,432,898 or 83.83%) had recovered while the number of active cases was a bit down at over 3.67 million (3,673,802, or 15.07% of the total). The case fatality rate was 1.09%.
Fifteen states – Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, Telangana, Punjab, Assam, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Goa – with heavy caseloads 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.
Twenty-four states/Union Territories have reported more than 1,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, namely Karnataka (41,779), Maharashtra (39,923), Kerala (34,694), Tamil Nadu (31,892), Andhra Pradesh (22,018), West Bengal (20,846), Uttar Pradesh (15,647), Rajasthan (14,289), Odisha (12,390), Haryana (10,608), Gujarat (9,995), Delhi (8,506), Madhya Pradesh (8,087), Punjab (8,035), Chattisgarh (7,594), Bihar (7,494), Uttarakhand (5,775), Telangana (4,305),Assam (4,078), Jharkhand (3,776), Himachal Pradesh (3,044), Jammu and Kashmir (3,027), Goa (2,455), and Puducherry (1,974).
Nine other states/Union Territories have reported more than 100 new cases in the last 24 hours, namely Manipur (726), Chandigarh (650), Meghalaya (627), Tripura (449), Nagaland (275), Arunachal Pradesh (263), Ladakh (240), Lakshadweep (173), and Mizoram (122).
Thirty-one states/Union Territories have reported 3 or more Covid-19 deaths each in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (695), Karnataka (373), Uttar Pradesh (311), Delhi (289), Tamil Nadu (288), Punjab (180), Uttarakhand (181), Chattisgarh (172), Haryana (164), Rajasthan (155), West Bengal (136), Gujarat (104), Andhra Pradesh (96), Kerala (93), Madhya Pradesh (88), Bihar (77), Jharkhand (76), Assam (76), Himachal Pradesh (67), Goa (61), Jammu and Kashmir (60), Puducherry (30), Telangana (29), Odisha (22), Manipur (16), Nagaland (13), Meghalaya (12), Chandigarh (8), Sikkim (6), Arunachal Pradesh (5), and Tripura (3). The rest of the states/Union Territories have reported 2 or less deaths.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases after the USA, and the third highest number of deaths after the USA and Brazil in cumulative numbers.
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The cumulative total of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India and Nepal has increased by 300 to reach 3,377, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) on its Tibet.net website May 15. Of the total number of cases, 2,119 had recovered, 1,175 were active, and 83 had died. Deaths had increased by 21.
Addressing its 89th weekly press briefing, the CTA’s Covid-19 task force had said May 13 that there had been 443 new cases and 21 new deaths over the preceding one week.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled nearly 162 million (161,927,626) and the deaths over 3.35 million (3,358,518), according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of May 15, 2021 at 1:50 PM.
