India crossed nine million COVID-19 cases after reporting 45,882 new cases in the last 24 hours. The country took 21 days to report 1 million new cases, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's COVID-19 dashboard. The total COVID-19 case count in the country stood at 90,04,365, as of 8:00 am, November 20, 2020.
Currently, there are 4,43,794 active cases. The number of new cases was higher than the number of recovered cases in the country straight after October 3. In the interim period, the number of recovered cases has been consistently higher than the number of newly detected cases. Over 8.4 million people have recovered from COVID-19 so far.
From reporting over 1000 deaths daily, the country now reports around 400-700 deaths daily. The country reported 584 deaths in the last 24 hours.
The increase from 70 lakh to 80 lakh cases took 18 days while the increase from 80 lakh to 90 lakh cases took 21 days. This increase in duration is reportedly due to the decrease in the weekly average number of new cases reported by the country. In the week between November 14- November 20, India reported a daily average of 39,367 cases. However, the November 14 week also witnessed less testing as people did not want to get tested during the Hindu festival of Diwali. India conducted an average of 9 lakh tests daily in this week while it was testing over 11 lakh daily earlier.
India is only the second country to surpass 9 million cases. Till the end of September, several experts believed that India was set to cross the US to become the country with the highest number of COVID-19 cases. However, the US has witnessed a new wave of increase in cases with the country reporting around 1,10,000 cases daily in the last week. According to the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, the US has over 110 lakh cases.
Even the European Hemisphere is witnessing a new surge in cases. France, UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic have been reporting more than 18,000 cases daily.
India's growth to nine million comes in a period of 294 days as the first case was reported on January 30 in the country. The first million cases were reported in 169 days. 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, 13 days to report the fourth million and five million mark was crossed in a span of 11 days. The six million cases mark was crossed after the country reported one million new cases in 12 days. The difference between six to seven million cases was only 13 days. The rise to eight million took the country 18 days while it took the country 21 days to reach nine million cases
The infographic below shows India's trajectory from the first case reported on January 30 to crossing 9 million cases on November 19.
Mortality
Since October 4, the country has reported less than 1000 deaths. With 1290 new deaths on September 16, the country had reported its highest one-day COVID-19 deaths. In the last 24 hours, the country reported 584 new deaths. India's current mortality rate stands at 1.47%. The Ministry of Health aims to bring down this rate to less than one per cent. The country ranks third with 1,32,162 deaths after US - with over 2.52 lakh deaths - and Brazil with 1.68 lakh deaths.
Recovered and Active Cases
The country's recovery rate has risen to 93.60%. Over 1.1 million people recovered from COVID-19 in the same span of 21 days it took to record a million new cases in the country. The country has reported a higher number of recovered cases than new cases since October 3. But in the last 24 hours, the number of new cases was 491 higher than the recovered.
Currently, India has around 4.43 lakh active cases and the rate of active cases is at 4.93 per cent.
Testing
India has conducted over 12.95 crore COVID-19 tests. These include the RT-PCR, Rapid Antigen Tests, TrueNat and CBNAAT tests. In its press conference on November 10, the government announced that 46 per cent of the testing was conducted by RT-PCR while 49 per cent tests were through rapid antigen.
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. India's current overall positivity rate stands at 76.95% since the beginning of the pandemic while the weekly average between November 14-November 20 was 4.24% Owing to the decrease in positivity and case fatality rate, Niti Aayog Member, Dr. V K Paul stated that India has the pandemic under control but needs to continue its tracking-testing-tracing-treating and quarantining measures diligently.
Representation Of States
Ten states including Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, West Bengal, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh, represented 76.7% of the active cases detected in the country.
Delhi and Haryana have seen an increase in the number of cases. Delhi has been reporting the highest number of cases in the country.
Vaccines
While the clinical trials for Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadilla's indigenous vaccine and Serum Institute of India's Phase III trials of the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine are underway, other vaccines are also going to be manufactured by Indian pharma companies. Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN and Serum Institute of India's Oxford vaccine are set to begin their Phase III trials, while Zydus has completed its Phase II trials.
Indigenously developed Biological E's vaccine candidate is set to begin its Phase I trials.
Dr. Reddy's that signed up with the Russian vaccine received approval for Phase II/III trials has begun their trials in Kanpur.
While Moderna and Pfizer showed promising results. Dr. V K Paul said that they might not have enough doses for India. India, thus far, is depending on the aforementioned vaccines and the Novavax vaccine that will be manufactured by Serum Institute of India, too.