With the highest single-day rise of nearly 79,000 Covid-19 cases India also recorded total 36 lakh plus covid cases till now .
India yesterday set a record when it reported 78,761 new infections in 24 hours — the world’s highest single-day rise — even as it continued to open up the economy.
India is already the world’s third-most infected nation with more than 3.5 million cases, behind the US and Brazil. It has also reported more than 63,000 deaths, according to the official health ministry toll. The US set the previous record on July 17 with 77,638 daily infections, according to an AFP tally.
Experts warn that while a ramp up in testing in recent months was encouraging, more needed to be done to capture the scale of the pandemic in the world’s second-most populous nation. The virus has badly hit megacities such as financial hub Mumbai and the capital New Delhi, but is now also surging in smaller cities and rural areas. “Testing per million in India at 30,000 remains the second lowest in top 10 (virus-infected) countries. Mexico is lowest at about 10,000,” virologist Shahid Jameel, who heads the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, told AFP Sunday. “We are still finding one positive in every 11 to 12 tests. This number should be one in 20 simply and means that testing is still sub-optimal and the outbreak is growing.” Doctor Hemant Shewade, a Bangalore-based community medicine expert, added that India also needed to focus on reducing deaths — the fourth-highest in the world according to a tally by John Hopkins University.
The discharge rate of COVID-19 patients in West Bengal rose to 81.9 per cent after 3,308 patients recovered from the disease on Sunday, the health department said. A total of 1,30,952 people have so far been cured of COVID-19 in the state. West Bengal reported 3,019 fresh coronavirus cases on Sunday, pushing the tally to 1,59,785, while the death toll mounted to 3,176 with 50 more fatalities, the department said in a bulletin.
