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India Coronavirus (Covid-19) Cases: Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir reported an unusually high number of new cases on Sunday, amidst growing indications that a widespread surge in novel Coronavirus infections in the country might just be around the corner.
Jammu and Kashmir, which was adding between 100 and 200 cases on most days for the last two weeks, reported as many as 620 new infections on Sunday. The state now has more than 4,000 confirmed cases now, with 41 deaths.
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Haryana, which has been witnessing high growth of cases for the last ten days, reported nearly 500 cases on Sunday, its highest so far. Nearly half of these, 230, were reported from Gurugram, though almost all districts in the state had fresh cases on Sunday. Sonepat reported 76 cases, while Faridabad had 56. The state now has 4,448 cases.
These two are not the only states showing signs of a surge, though. In the last week, several states have begun to deviate from their trend-lines and started to report higher numbers. West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala, Assam, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Goa, Tripura, Manipur are all showing an increase in their growth rates, not to speak of states like Delhi and Tamil Nadu, which have been growing at a fast rate for quite some time now. Even Uttar Pradesh, which was growing at a very sedate rate, reported 433 new cases on Monday, and has now replaced Rajasthan as the state with the fifth-highest caseload in the country.
The national growth rate has still been declining because of the slow growth rate in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. But that might not be the case very long. The share of these states in the national caseload has been declining steadily for the last two weeks (see graph), and with that will go down their influence on the national curve.
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The surge in numbers is not unexpected, however. If anything, it is happening with a delay. It’s been more than a month since the restrictions in lockdown rules were relaxed, train and flight services resumed, and many previously restricted activities progressively allowed to restart. It was expected that by May 15, the country would start seeing a steady rise in its growth rate. But thanks to the slowdown in Maharashtra and Gujarat, that has not happened till now. The national growth rate (seven day compounded daily growth rate) is still going down, and on Sunday it was 4.38 per cent, down from the peak of over 7 per cent in the first week of May.
| STATE | TOTAL POSITIVE | NEW CASES | TOTAL RECOVERIES | DEATHS
|
| Maharashtra | 85,975 | 3,007 | 39,314 | 3,060 |
| Tamil Nadu | 31,667 | 1,515 | 16,999 | 269 |
| Delhi | 28,936 | 1,282 | 10,999 | 812 |
| Gujarat | 20,097 | 480 | 13,643 | 1,249 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 10,536 | 433 | 6,185 | 275 |
| Rajasthan | 10,486 | 262 | 7,641 | 240 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 9,401 | 173 | 6,331 | 412 |
| West Bengal | 8,187 | 449 | 3,303 | 396 |
| Karnataka | 5,452 | 239 | 2,132 | 63 |
| Bihar | 5,070 | 239 | 2,405 | 30 |
In absolute numbers, however, the cases are rising rapidly. On Sunday, 10,750 new cases were discovered across the country. The total number of infections in the country has crossed 2.5 lakh, and is now rapidly closing on the United Kingdom, which is the fourth-worst affected country in the world with 2.87 lakh infections. However, while the UK has recorded over 40,600 deaths till now, the number of deaths in India has just crossed 7,000.
