India has become the world’s third country to pass four million coronavirus cases, setting a new record daily surge in cases on Saturday as the crisis shows no sign of peaking.
The 86,432 new cases took India to 4,023,179 infections, third behind the United States which has more than 6.3 million and just trailing Brazil on 4.1 million. Now India crosses four million coronavirus cases.
While the government has eased restrictions in a bid to revive the economy, India now has the world’s fastest growing number of cases at more than 80,000 a day and the highest daily death toll at more than 1,000.
The country’s caseload has gone from three to four million in just 13 days, faster than the United States and Brazil.
The pandemic is now spreading through rural areas which have poor health facilities but is also resurging in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai and India is showing more than four million coronavirus cases.
Maharashtra state, which includes Mumbai, has been at the centre of the crisis in India since a nationwide lockdown was imposed in March. It still accounts for nearly a quarter of the new daily cases across the country of 1.3 billion.
Shamika Ravi, an economics professor and former government adviser who has closely followed pandemic trends in India, said that India is “nowhere close” to a peak and Maharashtra must become the “focus” of the campaign against the coronavirus.
‘Worst is yet to come’
In rural Maharashtra, the worst-affected state with 863,062 cases and 25,964 deaths, doctors said measures like wearing masks and washing hands had now largely been abandoned.
“There is no controlling Covid-19 in India without controlling the outbreak in Maharashtra,” she said on Twitter.
“Given its economic significance, Maharashtra will continue to influence the spread of infection elsewhere in the country.” India becomes third country to pass four million coronavirus cases.
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