Monitor News Desk
Srinagar: India has now overtaken Italy to become the sixth worst affected country after the number of coronavirus disease cases in India rose to 2.35 lakh on Friday, data from America’s Johns Hopkins University showed.
India had crossed China, where the virus emerged late last year, in terms of cases for the ninth spot just a week ago.
Figures from the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University showed around midnight that India had 235,769 Covid-19 cases and Italy 236,184.
The country also saw a record number of fatalities due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in a single day on Friday, adding 300 deaths that took the country’s toll from the viral illness to 6,641.
However, India’s case fatality rate (CFR) – defined as the proportion of deaths to the total number of cases – continued to remain steady at 2.8%, much lower than the global mortality rate of 5.8%, even as the number of cases has continued too see an upward trend.
At an average, the country has reported 239 daily new deaths in the last seven days, 33% higher than the average of 179 of the week before that.
The country is also inching towards adding 10,000 daily new cases, reporting more than 9,000 cases for the third consecutive day; it was 9,398 on Friday, 9,962 on Thursday and 9,565 on Wednesday. On Friday, India’s total tally was 236,037.
Experts say India has slowed the spread of infections with an early decision to enforce strict lockdowns, first imposed on March 25, but the number of infections is likely to continue rising as the government eases restrictions to help spur an ailing economy. The country is likely to hit the peak of infections sometime in June-July, before the curve of daily new cases begins to fall.
According to Johns Hopkins data, the US has the most number of infected people in the world with more than 1.8 million Covid-19 cases. The US has 18,80,703 infections and 1,08,496 deaths. Of these, 485,002 people have been cured of the infection.
In Brazil also, the coronavirus outbreak has been increasing rapidly and it is second only to the US in the list of countries which are most affected by the infection.
The number of infected in Brazil has crossed the five lakh mark. So far, 614,941 people have been infected and 34,021 people have died. At the same time, 2,54,963 people have returned home after treatment.
Russia ranks third on the list of coronavirus affected countries. After 8,726 new cases of Covid-19, the number of infected people has reached 449,834 in Russia. Its death toll stands at 5,528 and 212,237 people have got rid of the disease.
The epidemic in Italy, the most-affected country in Europe, has killed 33,774 people and infected 2,34,531 people. In Spain, 240,978 people have been infected and 27,134 people have died.
So far, 87,174 people have contracted the coronavirus disease and 4,638 have died in China. According to a report, 80% of the deaths in China were in people over 60 years of age.
The situation in European countries of France and Germany is also grim. So far, 189,569 people have been infected in France and 29,068 have succumbed to Covid-19. In Germany, 184,924 people have been infected and 8,645 have died.
