3.5.21

Covid-19’s deadliest week in India

In the deadliest week yet of the Covid-19 pandemic, India recorded more than 26 lakh new cases and nearly 23,800 deaths in the past seven days, though daily infection numbers registered a drop after hitting a peak of over 4 lakh on Friday.

India reported 3,70,188 fresh cases on Sunday, the second consecutive day of falling numbers following a tally of 3.92 lakh on Saturday. There was a slight drop in the death toll from the virus as well, with 3,375 fatalities reported on Sunday, a day after casualties had climbed to an all-time high of close to 3,700.

Overall, however, the daily numbers remain very high. The April 26-May 2 week ended with India posting the highest number of new cases recorded in any country over a seven-day period for the second week running. Last week, the country had logged nearly 22.5 lakh cases. During its worst week of the pandemic (January 4-10), the US had reported 17.7 lakh new cases, as per worldometers.info. While weekly numbers were still on the rise, there was a discernible slowdown in the growth. The current week's numbers were 16% higher than the April 19-25 case tally, down from a growth rate of 47% in that week. Deaths rose at a high rate of 47% although lower than the previous week's growth of 89%.

Worryingly, the positivity rate during the current week was 21.4%, higher than the rate of 19.8% in the previous week.

This could be an indication that the current surge was not over yet.

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