India's trajectory of daily Covid-19 cases highest-ever globally

New Delhi, Aug. 29 (IANS): The coronavirus pandemic in India currently seems to be at its worst, as the country's trajectory of daily cases continued to be the highest-ever recorded globally since the start of the health crisis in December 2019.

On Saturday, India reported 76,472 new coronavirus cases, taking the total tally to 34,63,972, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

This was slightly lower than the country's all-time spike of 77,266 cases a day earlier.

Single-day cases in India have been rising at an alarming rate in the last three weeks, putting it ahead of the US and Brazil, the two worst-hit countries.

Out of the total 34,63,972 cases, the number of recoveries surged to 26,48,998, while the death toll climbed to 62,550 with 1,021 people succumbing to it in a span of 24 hours.

India's journey to over 34 lakh cases took almost seven months since the emergence of the first case on January 30.

On July 17, the country had logged 10 lakh cases, which then doubled to 20 lakh in 20 days, on August 7 and added another 10 lakh by August 23.

It has now added four lakh cases in six days.

At this point, it is pertinent to compare parameters to see the progression of the virus.

The doubling rate, which is the rate at which the total cases in the country are doubling, is 32 days as against 68 days in Brazil and 96 in the US.

The positivity rate, which is the total confirmed cases out of the total tests conducted that day, has come down as compared to July. It currently stands at 8.23 per cent.

Another parameter - case fatality rate, which is the proportion of deaths among the confirmed cases, is 1.8 per cent.

The rate is better than the global average of 3.4 per cent and also of the US and Brazil, at 2.1 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively.

Meanwhile, the recovery rate is currently 76.4 per cent. It was 7.10 per cent on March 25 when the lockdown was imposed.

The rate slowly increased to 7.1 per cent during the first lockdown; 11.42 per cent in the second; 26.59 in the third; and 41.61 per cent in the last phase.

The recovery rate was 64.50 per cent on July 29, which was exactly a month ago.

The five most affected states by total tally of cases are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.