India might observe a peak in Coronavirus cases in mid-July, if the lockdown in lifted by May end, warns a noted public health expert and epidemiologist, but at the same time hoped that there might be a "lower surge" owing to the watertight containment measures taken during the past two months.

India is currently, the 11th worst-affected country within the world with India's tally of active cases at 63,624 as of Thursday, the fifth largest within the world after the US, Russia, Brazil, and France.

The government officials, however, reportedly stressed that the time taken in India for the case count to maneuver from 100 to at least one lakh has been far better at 64 days, which was better than many other badly-hit countries and truly double the time taken within the US and Spain.

India reported its first COVID-19 case on 30 January and reached 100 cases 45 days afterward 15 March. However, the country crossed 1,000 cases reached much faster on 29 March and breached 10,000 cases on 13 April. India reached 50,000 cases on 6 May, while it took but fortnight for subsequent 50,000 cases with the country crossing one lakh cases on 18 May.

Globally, quite 50 lakh people have tested positive for the deadly viral infection since its emergence in China last December, while nearly 3.3 lakh have lost their lives. quite 19 lakh people have recovered thus far.

Though the health ministry put the confirmed cases at 1,12, 359, as per a PTI tally of figures announced by different states and Union territories, as of 6.55 PM, showed a better number of confirmed cases at 1,13,136 and recoveries at over 46,000.

Several states and UTs continued to report new cases on Thursday, with the capital itself recording a spike of 571 fresh cases to require its total to 11,659. This was the third consecutive day when 500 or more fresh cases are reported during a day in Delhi.

Gujarat reported 371 new cases to require its tally to 12,910, while 233 fresh cases were found in Ahmedabad itself. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani launched a week-long campaign to teach citizens on issues associated with COVID-19 and reportedly said that folks should learn to measure with coronavirus while fighting against it.

Maharashtra, the worst-hit state in India, recorded 2,345 new cases, taking the tally within the state to 41,642. This was the fifth consecutive day when the state has reported quite 2,000 new coronavirus cases.

New cases were reported from Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Assam, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh also, among other states.

In many of those states, the new cases largely included people having returned from other states or in some cases from abroad.

In Barabanki itself, 245 samples were sent for testing on 15-16 May, out of which 95 are found positive for the viral infection.

Among those that tested positive, 49 are migrants who had recently returned from other states, while the remaining 46 are those that had are available contact with six infected persons and were shifted to isolation, district administration officials reportedly said.

In Bihar also, detection of quite 1,000 cases within the last three weeks has been mainly attributed to the large-scale influx of individuals who are returning to the state from places that they had been stuck in during the lockdown.

A similar trend has been observed across various states after special trains began operating on 1 May to ferry migrant workers back to their native places, while there have also been cases, including in Goa and Kerala, of these people testing positive who were brought back from abroad in special flights.