(TibetanReview.net, Oct18’20) – Latest reports show that after recording the highest number of daily Covid-19 infections in the world for more than two months, India may finally be passing the baton back to the US, according to the timesofindia.com Oct 18. For two days running, on Oct 15 and 16, the US reported more daily cases than India, which had been logging the highest single-day counts in the world since Aug 6, the report said.
The report said it was after 71 days that the US again posted the highest daily tally in the world on Aug 15. During these 71 days, India held the top position.
The US continued to lead the world with more than 8.3 million cumulative cases, followed by India with nearly 7.5 million cumulative cases, the report noted.
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Meanwhile in India, a government-appointed scientific committee has said the Covid-19 epidemic seemed to have peaked in the country and was now on the decline, and was likely to run its course by Feb 2021, reported the indianexpress.com Oct 18.
The committee, headed by Professor M Vidyasagar of IIT Hyderabad, has said, using computer models to map the trajectory of the pandemic, that the pandemic was likely to have peaked in the middle of September, and the total number of infections in India was unlikely to exceed 10.6 million. So far, 7.5 million people in India have been infected, of which nearly 6.6 million had recovered.
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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 61,871 new cases and 1,033 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Oct 18 at 8AM, taking their totals to 7,494,551 cases and 114,031 deaths.
A total of 6,597,209, or 88.03%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 783,311, or 10.45% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.52%. These were almost all improvements over the previous day’s figures.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 61,871, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 72,614, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 11,776. Not only has the number of active cases remained below nine lakh for the 10th day, it has also fallen below 8 lakh for the second day.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the third highest number of deaths.
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Four states, namely Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu have accumulated more than 680,000 cases each in that order.
Seven other states, namely Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, and Bihar had more than 200,000 each in that order.
Seven other states, namely, Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, and Punjab had reported more than 120,000 cases each so far in that order.
Three other states/ Union Territories, namely Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttarakhand had reported more than 57,000 cases each so far in that order.
Seven more states/Union Territories, namely Goa, Puducherry, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Chandigarh, and Arunachal Pradesh, reported more than 13,000 cases each in that order.
Besides, there were seven other states/Union Territories with a total more than 2,000 cases each, namely Meghalaya, Nagaland, Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Mizoram in that order.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 41,965 (↑463); followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with more than 10,400 deaths each; Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh with more than 6,400 deaths each; West Bengal and Delhi with more than 5,900 deaths each; Punjab and Gujarat with more than 3,600 deaths each; Madhya Pradesh with more than 2,700 deaths; Rajasthan, Haryana, Chattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Telangana, Kerala, and Odisha with more than 1,100 deaths each; Bihar, Uttarakhand, Assam, and Jharkhandwith between 990 and 832 deaths each, and so on in that order.
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The total number of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan had remained unchanged for the second day at 703 (↑0), of whom 410 were active, 276 had recovered and 17 (↑0) had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as of Oct 18.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 39,698,835 and the deaths 1,110,226, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 1:54 PM on Oct 18, 2020.
