[Unlike the United States and
Brazil, where the number of new cases have eased in recent weeks, India’s
outbreak shows no sign of peaking. Since early August, India has been reporting
the highest daily increases in cases in the world.]
By Joanna Slater and Niha Masih
NEW DELHI — India overtook Brazil to become the country with the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world as infections continue to accelerate in this country of more than 1.3 billion people.
India added 90,802 cases — a fresh
global record in the pandemic — in the last 24 hours, pushing its total past
4.2 million. Only the United States, with 6.2 million cases, has recorded more.
Brazil had 4.1 million cases as of Sunday evening.
More than 71,000 people in India
have died of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, making it
the worst-affected nation in Asia.
[India passes coronavirus milestone: The largest number of daily cases in the world]
Unlike the United States and
Brazil, where the number of new cases have eased in recent weeks, India’s
outbreak shows no sign of peaking. Since early August, India has been reporting
the highest daily increases in cases in the world.
Infections have spread from major
cities to every corner of the country, including to rural areas that are poorly
equipped to test and treat patients.
Earlier this spring, India
instituted the world’s largest lockdown to try to stem the pandemic. But the
restrictions caused economic devastation and failed to reverse the trajectory
of the outbreak. In early June, the government changed course.
Jayaprakash Muliyil, a leading
Indian epidemiologist, predicted that India’s daily reported cases will
continue to rise in coming weeks. He estimates that the daily cases could
double over the next month before retreating.
He criticized the government for
implementing a harsh nationwide lockdown, calling it a “waste” that hurt the
economy and people’s livelihoods. The lockdown “was a cruel joke played on our
poor in the name of covid.”
Now nearly all the prior shutdown
measures have been lifted, although schools remain closed and large gatherings
are still prohibited. On Monday, the subway system in New Delhi, India’s
capital, started transporting passengers again for the first time in more than
five months.
As the country has reopened, coronavirus
cases have surged. Testing has also expanded significantly, although the number
of tests remains low on a per capita basis compared to other countries.
The coronavirus is only one of
several battles India is fighting. Crippled by the lockdown, India’s economy
shrank by 24 percent in the second quarter over the same period a year earlier,
the largest drop ever recorded and the worst contraction of any major economy.
Meanwhile, India is also grappling
with a major crisis on its border with China. In June, the two countries
engaged in their deadliest clash in nearly 50 years. Thousands of troops from
both countries remain deployed at the disputed frontier and talks have failed
to lower tensions.
Indian government officials say
that as testing increases, so too will cases. They point out that India fares
well compared to some countries on measures of mortality from the coronavirus.
India has recorded about 50 deaths per million people due to covid-19, far
lower than in either Brazil or the United States, where the same figure is more
than 500.
Experts believe that India’s lower
death toll may be partly the result of its predominantly youthful population.
Others speculate that some immunological factor might be making the disease
less severe. The official figures also understate the true death toll, since an
unknown number of deaths from covid-19 are being missed or misreported.
Some doctors caution that India’s
outbreak is entering a more dangerous phase as the virus spreads to smaller
towns and villages. Containing and addressing coronavirus cases “is going to be
much more difficult and challenging” in such areas, said SP Kalantri, a
professor of medicine at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences.
Health-care infrastructure is weak, access to medical care is difficult and
diagnostic tests are lacking, he said.
“If this trend continues,” Kalantri
said, “the worst is yet to come.”
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