India is the country with the third-highest coronavirus caseload in the world after the United States and Brazil.
New Delhi, August 3:
India’s COVID-19 tally crossed the 18-lakh mark on Monday, just a day after it went past 17 lakh, with 52,972 cases being reported in a day, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The country now has 18,03,695 infections of the deadly virus which has affected more than 17.5 million people globally. With 771 COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, the number of deaths count has climbed to 38,135, the government said. Several prominent public figures in the country, including Home Minister Amit Shah and Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa, have tested positive for the virus, which has led to the death of a minister in the Uttar Pradesh government. More than 11.86 lakh patients have recovered; the recovery rate stood at 65.76 per cent this morning. India has tested a total of 2,02,02,858 samples so far. The positivity rate – percentage of patients who have tested positive for coronavirus – stood at 13.90 per cent.
Here are the top 10 developments on coronavirus cases in India:
It took just 186 days for India to cross the 18-lakh mark, after the first case was reported in Kerala in January this year. The country had crossed the one lakh-mark in 110 days. More than 60 per cent of total cases in the country and over 50 per cent of total deaths have been recorded in July.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has been admitted to Medanta hospital, located in Haryana’s Gurugram near Delhi, after he tested positive. The minister has said his health was “fine” but he was being hospitalised “on the advice of doctors”. A team of doctors led by AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria are likely to oversee Mr Shah’s treatment, news agency ANI reported.
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa tweeted late Sunday night that he had tested positive for the novel coronaviru, the latest among prominent public figures in the country to have contracted COVID-19. In a brief post on Twitter, Mr Yediyurappa said that he was fine but had been hospitalised on the advice of doctors. While his daughter Padmavathi has also tested positive for the virus, the Chief Minister’s son, Vijayendra, has tested negative. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, Governor Banwarilal Purohit has also tested positive for the virus.
On Sunday, an Uttar Pradesh minister died due of Covid two week after she tested positive for the virus. Kamal Rani Varun, who served as Minister of Technical Education, is the first minister in Uttar Pradesh to die after contracting coronavirus.
At 3.6 per cent, India’s rate of increase in cases is more than double than the 1.6 per cent in US and significantly higher than Brazil’s 2.3 per cent – the only two countries with a higher caseload.
Maharashtra — the worst affected state from the infection — added over 9,000 cases in the last 24 hours taking overall figures to 4.4 lakh cases. About 30 per cent of these cases have been reported from Pune. Pune’s overall tally reached nearly 95,000 on Sunday, including 48,481 recoveries and 2,226 deaths.
Andhra Pradesh — which surpassed Delhi to become the third worst coronavirus-hit state in the country last week — reported 8,555 new cases and 67 deaths on Sunday, taking the state’s count of coronavirus cases to 1,58,764.
After a week that saw the number of new coronavirus cases grow by less than one per cent, Delhi on Sunday reported 15 COVID-19 deaths – the fewest due to coronavirus since June 9. The city also reported less than 1,000 fresh cases of coronavirus.
The UN health agency on Saturday warned that the coronavirus pandemic would be lengthy and could lead to “response fatigue”, as India and the Philippines reported a record rise in new cases.
Six months after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has killed more than 680,000 people and infected more than 17.5 million, according to news agency AFP.
