Growth of Covid-19 Cases Hits Low of 5% Since Start of 2nd Wave But Death Rates Grim Reminder of Crisis

India witnessed over 27,000 deaths and 27.4 lakh cases over the last week, with the daily case fatality rate crossing the 1% mark, according to Times of India. Despite the case growth rate being a record low of 5% since the start of the second wave, deaths mounted to 15% with the highest recorded daily case fatality rate in the last three days.

India’s weekly toll crossed 25,000 for the first time, and the period of May 3-9 saw 27,243 deaths, a sharp contrast to the 23,781 deaths reported just the previous week. The country began to see a decline, with a 5% rise in this week’s cases, 16% rise in last week’s cases and a 47% rise in the week before that. On Sunday, daily cases began dropping across several Indian states. Fatalities dropped from 4,000 to 3,751 over the past two days.

However, India’s case fatality rate is still at 1.1%. Three states and a Union Territory reported their highest singe-day rise in infections, with Tamil Nadu (28,897), Bengal (19,441), Chandigarh (895) and Meghalaya (418) took the lead, with Puducherry, Meghalaya and Manipur having death tolls of 26, 18 and 15 respectively. Punjab also saw a rise in the death toll at 191, followed by Uttarakhand seeing 180 fatalities.

Maharashtra had the highest deaths in the country, with the number reaching 572 on Sunday.

More than 2 lakh people have succumbed to the pandemic in India. On April 28, India recorded more than 3,000 deaths in a day and breached the 4,000 mark on May 8.

More than 40 percent of India’s 741 districts, or 301 of them, had a Covid-19 positivity rate of 20 percent or more for the week from May 1 to May 7, reported the TOI quoting data by the health ministry on Saturday.

Data released by the government, on Covid patients requiring critical care has revealed that nearly 50,000 people are currently in ICUs while over 14,000 on ventilator support.

ACovid-19 variant spreading in India is more contagious and may be dodging vaccine protections, contributing to the country’s explosive outbreak, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said Saturday.

Soumya Swaminathan warned that “the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it’s an extremely rapidly spreading variant”.

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