India is fast becoming another global hotspot for COVID-19

iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-

India has been witnessing a spike in the number of coronavirus disease cases. In the last nine days, the country has recorded more than 22,000 Covid-19 cases daily.

According to Worldometers, due to the rapid spread of the disease, India’s share in daily global cases has reached 12 percent.

India on Saturday reported 27,114 new cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours. Globally, the figure stood at 2,14,741, according to Worldometers. This is 12.6 percent of the global cases.

In fact, an analysis of the daily trend shows India has been continuously recording over 11 percent of the global cases in the last few days.

The trend has been rising since June 30, when India’s share to cases in daily global cases of the coronavirus disease was 10.4 percent.

On Saturday, India recorded another single-day increase of 27,114 cases, this makes India’s total tally zoomed past the eight-lakh mark. In fact, it took just four days for India to go from 7 lakh cases to 8 lakh cases.

This was the third consecutive day that Covid-19 cases in the country have increased by more than 26,000.

Maharashtra continues to see a huge spike, with as many as 7,862 new COVID-19 cases and 226 deaths reported on Friday.

Karnataka, the one state that had relatively managed to control the rampant spread in the first wave seems to be losing the battle, it is witnessing a new surge of confirmed cases and deaths.

2,627 new COVID-19 cases and 71 deaths were reported in Karnataka in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 38,843 and toll to 684, reports ANI quoting the state health department.

For this reason, the Karnataka state government has announced another lockdown for Bengaluru, which had opened the city, from July 14th to 21st, due to rising cases.

Karnataka Health Minister, B. Sriramulu has said that “the cases may double in the next 15 to 30 days and the coming two months would emerge as a big challenge for the government in tackling the pandemic.”

Assam has also been witnessing a rapid rise in the number of cases, with more than 5,000 new infections having detected in the last one week. The state has already re-imposed lockdown in Guwahati and surrounding areas.

Maharashtra remains the worst affected with 2,46,600 cases followed by Tamil Nadu at 1,34,226 Delhi at 1,10,921, Gujarat at 40,941, Uttar Pradesh at 35,092, Karnataka at 36,216 and Telangana at 33,402

The last 24 hours, there were  551 deaths reported. 223 are from Maharashtra, 70 from Karnataka, 69 from Tamil Nadu, 34 from Delhi, 26 from West Bengal, 24 from Uttar Pradesh, 17 from Andhra Pradesh, 12 from Bihar, 10 each from Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, nine from Telangana, eight each from Assam and Punjab and seven from Haryana.

In just three weeks, India went from the world’s sixth worst-affected country to the third, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

This shows India’s fragile health system and how even stringent months-long lockdown couldn’t help prevent the spread.

In India, public health is managed at a state level, and some have managed better than others. The southern state of Kerala, where India’s first three virus cases were reported, has been held up as a model. It isolated patients early, traced and quarantined contacts and tested aggressively.

By contrast, Delhi, the state that includes the national capital, has been sharply criticized for failing to anticipate a surge of cases in recent weeks as lockdown measures eased.

Currently, India has seven vaccines in various stages of a clinical trial but none of them have clear cut date on when they will be available to the public.

Even after 5 months of battling with this virus, experts still do not know fully about the virus and what it is capable of, as new findings come up every week. And social distancing remains the best way to avoid getting infected.