A year into pandemic, India's death toll drops to fourth-highest
As India's battle against coronavirus logged one year on Saturday, the nation slipped on the death toll index, going from the third to fourth position. After registering over 1,500 fatalities in the 24-hour period, Mexico's death count is now the third-highest in the world, after the United States and Brazil. At 10,734,026 infections, India has lost 154,184 people to the highly-contagious disease.
On January 30, 2020, first case was reported in Kerala
It was on January 30, 2020, that India's first coronavirus case was detected in Kerala. Less than two months later, the federal government imposed a strict lockdown to control the spread of the disease. By mid-September, India entered its worst phase, with nearly 100,000 infections being recorded almost daily. However, in the following months, the number of new cases and deaths gradually dipped.
Few countries logging 500 deaths/daily; India's toll remained under 200
Notably, the number of active cases across India has slipped drastically since the September peak. It stood at 169,824 today, a fall of 1,862 from yesterday. 137 new deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours. To give a perspective, at least eight countries have been registering 500 deaths daily for over a fortnight now, while India managed to keep it under 200.
Four countries are registering 1,000 daily deaths
Of the eight countries, four, namely the US, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom have been adding 1,000 deaths daily for the past few days. In the worst-affected US, 447,459 have passed away due to the disease and 26,512,193 infections have been registered. At 9,119,477 infections, Brazil's death count stands at 222,775. And the UK has logged 3,772,813 cases and 104,371 deaths so far.
India's seven-day rolling average is less than seven countries
In another welcome development, India is no longer leading the chart of fresh cases, as it did from late August till October. The seven-day rolling average of daily cases is 13,500, lower than the corresponding figures for the US, Brazil, Russia, UK, France, Spain, and Mexico. Further, it is expected that Indonesia and Portugal will trump India on this scale in the coming days.
India's vaccination drive has also picked speed
Meanwhile, India's vaccination drive, labeled as the world's largest, also completed two weeks today. As per Ministry of Health data, 3,500,027 healthcare workers have so far been inoculated with 571,974 getting the first dose yesterday. Two vaccines — Covishield (locally produced by Pune-based Serum Institute of India) and COVAXIN (developed by Bharat Biotech) were given emergency use authorization on January 3.
