India reported 86,432 new cases in the last 24 hours, the highest one-day spike in cases witnessed globally, raising the total number of cases to 40,23,179. The move from 3 million to 4 million came in only 13 days.
India is only 68,622 cases away from Brazil that has been reporting an average of 40,941 new cases for the past week and has a total of 40,91,801 cases. India contribues to about 15.11% of the total 26.6 million cases, globally, according to the COVID-19 data by Johns Hopkins University.
It took the country 169 days to report the first million but the difference in the number of days in reporting the subsequent three million cases has only been decreasing. India crossed the two million case- mark after recording the new million cases in a span of 22 days. The next million cases were reported in 16 days as the country breached the three million mark.
India's trajectory to the four million cases from the time the first one lakh cases were reported can be seen in the graph below.
India has been reporting the highest number of new cases globally, daily since August 7. Interestingly, the 86, 432 cases reported by India in the last 24 hours is only 3,576 cases less than the total number of cases reported by China, where the virus originated. China currently has reported a total of 90,008 cases
In terms of the number of deaths reported, India ranks third with 69,562 deaths while US and Brazil claim the top two spots with 1,87.765 and 1,25,502 deaths.
Testing
According to the World Health Organization, a country is said to have the pandemic under control if the positivity rate is at 5%. Positivity rate is the number of samples testing positive from the total samples that are tested for positivity.
For the week ranging from August 30- Sep 5, India's average positivity rate is at 7.69 %. The country has strengthened its testing capacity as it has been conducting more than a million tests daily since August 31.
Representation Of States
In a press conference held on Thursday, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan shared that the five Indian states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh account for 62% of the total COVID-19 cases. Maharashtra has been reporting a new daily spike in the number of cases and deaths. The state with a total of 8,63,062 cases, has 1.92 lakh more cases than Peru which has the fifth highest number of cases globally on the basis of geographical boundaries of countries.
Delhi replaces Uttar Pradesh in the list of five states that represent 70% of the deaths reported in the country. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh claim the top share in the total deaths being reported in the country.
Vaccine Candidates
Two Indian indigenious vaccines– one by Bharat Biotech and the other by Zydus Cadilla are in Phase I/Phase II trials across the country. The most anticipated Oxford vaccine is also in Phase III trials that are being conducted by the Serum Institute of India.
India is also in talks with several other vaccine candidates for their manufacturing in the country. The WHO has an ACT accelerator for the equitable distribution of vaccines. India has still not made public if the country is a part of the 78 other nations that have already signed up for the accelerator.