India crosses 1 cr Covid cases, 347 more die
New Delhi: India on Saturday crossed one crore COVID-19 cases, adding 10 lakh infections in nearly a month, even as the virus spread slowed and recoveries surged to over 95.50 lakh, according to the Union Health ministry data.
The country's COVID-19 case tally had surpassed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23 and 40 lakh on September 5.
As per the health ministry's data, the total number of cases mounted to 1,00,04,599, and the death toll to 1,45,136 with the virus claiming 347 more lives in 24 hours. However, the COVID-19 case fatality rate has further declined to 1.45 per cent.
India reported its first Covid case 323 days ago on January 30 in Kerala while the first death was reported on March 10 in Karnataka.
Banking upon the better recovery rate and reduced fatality rate, the Health ministry officials had said: "The major factor to measure the impact of any pandemic is the number of deaths caused by the disease, which is very low in India. The country's case fatality rate is the lowest in the world."
In reply to a question whether the worst was over for India, Dr Samiran Panda, Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research, said that the epidemiological curve has come down for some states while there is a fluctuation for others.
"We have seen effective control in most of the states, while in some states we need to be mindful and watchful. The state scenarios are different from each other," Panda told said.
When asked if a second peak of COVID-19 can be worse, noted clinical scientist Gagandeep Kang opined the transmission will not be as rapid as was seen the first time and peak will not be as high.
"I don't think the exposure is enough to say that we have herd immunity and won't need to worry about it again, but I think it is enough to ensure that we will some level of protection so that the transmission will not be as rapid as was seen the first time and peak will not be as high as we saw the first time.
"The problem has not gone away it will not go away with herd immunity, but I don't think necessarily we will see second higher peaks as has been seen in the West," she said.
India is in the number one position in terms of the number of recovered Coronavirus cases, followed by Brazil, according to the Johns Hopkins University, which has been compiling COVID-19 data from all over the world.
The worst affected states and UTs with highest number of Covid cases are Maharashtra (18,88,767), Karnataka (9,07,123), Andhra Pradesh (8,77,806), Tamil Nadu (8,04,650), Kerala (6 93,865), Delhi (6,14,775) and Uttar Pradesh (5,72,196).
A total of 1,45,136 deaths have been reported so far in the country, including 48,574 from Maharashtra, followed by 11,989 from Karnataka, 11,954 from Tamil Nadu, 10,219 from Delhi among others.
