India reported a record increase in Covid-19 (5) infections on Monday, making it the second country, after the United States, to record more than 100,000 cases in one day. There were 103,558 new infections this Sunday (4), according to Johns Hopkins University.
Hospitals in Maharashtra, the Indian region worst affected by the pandemic, are increasingly overwhelmed with patients. India’s richest state, home to its commercial capital, Mumbai, and numerous industries, alone reported a record 57,074 new infections.
The country’s daily contamination has increased about 12-fold since it hit a major low in February, when authorities relaxed most restrictions, and people have all but stopped wearing masks and obeying distancing social.
With infections recorded on Sunday, India has racked up 12.58 million cases, the highest figure after those in the United States and Brazil, as data from the Ministry of Health show.
The latest death toll was 478, which places the country among the lowest fatality rates in the world, with 119 deaths per 1 million people. Brazil, which had the highest number of cases in a single day was 97,586 on March 25 – according to the press vehicle consortium – has 1,551 / 1 million.
According to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, the country has already exceeded 100,000 daily cases (100,158, the same day, March 25). The difference is that the portfolio assessment is closed earlier than that of the consortium, which allows for a two-day accumulation in the case of states that register their data later.
Last week India, with a total of 165,101 deaths, recorded the highest number of cases in the world.
More infectious variants of the virus may have played a role in the second round, epidemiologists say. “The new variant (s) probably explain a lot of this, rather than a simplistic explanation for the behavior,” says Rajib Dasgupta, director of the Center for Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. India has found hundreds of cases of variants first detected in the UK, South Africa and Brazil.
The world’s largest vaccine maker, the country has applied 77 million doses since the start of its campaign in mid-January, the third highest absolute figure in the world, after the United States and China.
Per capita vaccinations in India, however, are lower than in many other countries, including China – the most populous – which started immunizing its citizens much earlier. At the moment, India only vaccinates people over 45, having first covered health and frontline workers with the AstraZeneca vaccine and another locally developed with government support.