The number of coronavirus cases in India has marked significant and consecutive highest jumps in the last two weeks.
On Wednesday, the total count of COVID-19 confirmed cases in India crossed the 2.07 lakh-mark, while the number breached the 5,800-mark also. With this, India has now become the world's seventh worst-hit country in terms of Coronavirus cases, consistent with the World Health Organisation's (WHO) COVID-19 tracker.
Maharashtra continues to be the epicentre of the Coronavirus spread where the count of cases has witnessed a fairly large spike recently. Consistent with the Health Ministry, Maharashtra tops the number of cases with nearly 75,000 positive cases of infection while the single-day count is approaching 2,600. As many as 2,587 COVID-19 cases were reported from the state on Wednesday.
Delhi thus far is worst-affected Union Territory with over 23,000 cases and 550 deaths while Gujarat has reported over 18,000 cases with over 1,100 deaths.
Earlier last week, the Centre announced plans to unlock the country and issued guidelines for the opening of varied businesses with social distancing norms. India has been under lockdown since March 25, which was to finish on April 14, but was later extended till May 3 then further till May 17 and then 31.
The current phase of re-opening, called 'Unlock 1', takes an economic focus. The Centre intends on being smart about implementing the lockdown in select places so the economic activity of the country, altogether doesn't take any longer hits. The rising number of Coronavirus disease cases for the past few weeks within the country has led the Centre to arrive at the decision to take this call so as to stop COVID-19 from spreading further.
According to the new guidelines, all activities outside of containment zones are allowed to resume but in a phased manner from June 1. The rules will follow effect from June 1 and can be effective till June 30.
Maharashtra, the worst-affected State by the coronavirus pandemic, has more cases of disease than the national average.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) data, quoted by a leading Hindi language paper, Hindustan, the country’s average COVID-19 cases is 6.67 per 100. But in Maharashtra, this number is 16.
ICMR said that 1,39,485 Covid-19 tests were conducted within the last 24 hours (between Wednesday and Thursday) cross the country. The total count of samples tested within the country is 42,42,718.
Apart from Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Gujarat, Tripura and Bihar even have a better caseload than the national average.
The situation has, however, improved in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh.
If the speed of the spread of the COVID-19 infection continues, India will soon leave Italy behind. Hindustan has quoted figures from Worldometre, Italy has 2,33,836 cases of Covid-19 whereas the count has reached 2,17,965 in India.
India is recording around 9,000 cases daily. At this rate, it'll take India two days to cross Italy’s infection tally. However, the speed of fatality in India is far better than Italy. At nearly an equivalent number of infection, the European country has seen five times more deaths than India.