India’s daily deaths due to coronavirus climbed back to more than 4,000 after a day’s blip as the deadly pathogen spreads at an aggressive pace amid a lack of critical healthcare infrastructure and vaccines, triggering concerns that the world’s fastest growing outbreak would derail the nation’s budding economic recovery.
India reported 4,077 casualties in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 2.7 lakh in the world’s second-worst infected country, according to the Health Ministry’s update as of 8 a.m. on May 16.
New Covid-19 infections remained above 3 lakh for a week, with the total case count at 2.47 crore. While that’s less than the 4 lakh fresh infections being reported till last week, India is still adding more coronavirus cases in a day than any country has since the pandemic began.
Single-day recoveries surpassed new infections for the third straight day. That helped the active cases, accounting for nearly 15% of the total caseload, to stay below 37 lakh for the second consecutive day. The South Asian nation with 130 crore people is only behind the U.S. in the number of confirmed infections.
Key figures:
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Total confirmed cases: 2,46,84,077
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Total number of active cases: 36,18,458
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Total patients cured/discharged/migrated: 2,07,95,335
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Total deaths: 2,70,284
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Number of fresh cases in last 24 hours: 3,11,170
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One-day recoveries: 3,62,437
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One-day deaths: 4,077
To be sure, data on Covid-19 cases and related deaths may be severely deficient as several states have inadequate testing, chronic underreporting and have been attributing the casualties to other causes.
Among the states that are witnessing a massive surge in cases, Maharashtra has extended the current strict restrictions, along with some additional curbs such as any person entering the state will have to carry a negative RT-PCR test report, till 7 a.m. on June 1, 2021.
Delhi, too, has extended the lockdown, which was set to end on May 17, by another week; metro services have been suspended during this period. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are also under a two-week shutdown effective May 10, while West Bengal from May 16-30.
Meanwhile, India has vaccinated a total of 18.2 crore people. The country has increased the gap between two doses of Covishield, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in the country by the Serum Institute.
The guidance comes at a time the central government’s supply of vaccines has dried up, prompting states to prioritise second doses for those above 45 by halting inoculation of those aged 18-44.
Based on available real-life evidence, particularly from the U.K., the Covid-19 working group has agreed to increase dosing interval to 12-16 weeks between the two doses of Covishield, the Ministry of Health has said. However, no change in interval has been suggested for Covaxin.
Read more on India’s vaccination timeline…
Global Update
Globally, coronavirus cases passed 16.2 crore, with more than 33.6 lakh deaths.
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Singapore plans to vaccinate children under 16 years old after a recent rise of Covid-19 infections among students in the island state.
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Brazil, still fighting off a major outbreak driven in part by a virus variant, will restrict flights from India, the U.K. and South Africa to avoid the spread of a strain first found in India.
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The U.K. aims to double the pace of vaccination to hit as many as 1 million shots a day, in part to combat the rapid spread of a virus variant first found in India.
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Overall infections in the U.S. continued their decline to the lowest levels since early autumn.
For more global updates, read here…