India’s Covid-19 tally crossed the grim 1 crore milestone as the deadly pathogen continues to spread in in the world’s second-most populous nation, albeit at a slower pace.
The south Asian nation added 25,152 fresh infections in the last 24 hours, taking the total count to 1,00,04,599, according to the Health Ministry’s update at 8 a.m. on Dec. 19. This includes 9,550,712 recoveries and 1,45,136 fatalities. In the last 24 hours, 29,885 patients recovered and 347 have succumbed to the disease. The number of active cases in India stood at 3,08,751.
Home to about 130 crore people, India took 231 days to reach the 50-lakh mark and only 94 days to double it to 1 crore. India is only behind the U.S, with 17,459,296 total cases—the most in the world.
Once poised to overtake the U.S. as the country with most number of cases, India’s pace of growth slowed down in the last two months. Over the last few weeks, it has been reporting fewer than 30,000 new confirmed cases a day.
It’s now the fourth fastest growing outbreak in the world. The U.S. is adding more than 2 lakh cases on an average over the last week, while Brazil—the second largest outbreak—added more than 46,000 cases, and Russia added 27,000 cases.
India, in comparison, has added more than 26,000 fresh infections on average in the last week.