India coronavirus numbers explained: Many milestones, all worrisome

READ | India coronavirus numbers explained: Cases go north in Himalayan region

India coronavirus numbers explained: On Friday, the number of new cases detected across the country crossed the 11,000 mark for the first time.

The first case in Ladakh had been detected as far back as March 8, even before Maharashtra and Karnataka. That first wave had produced 11 infections, which rose to 18 later, and then to 43. Ladakh was Corona-free for quite some time once these 43 had recovered. But beginning in the last week of May, a second wave of infections has emerged, and the union territory has been reporting a few new cases almost every day. But Friday’s is likely to throw the region’s health apparatus out of gear. A PTI report said at a meeting convened by Chief Executive Councillor of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council on Friday, possible “recent lapses” in handling of COVID-19 cases also came up for discussion.

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Sikkim had remained corona-free till as late as May 23, when the state detected its first positive case. The second case came ten days later. The latest batch of 50 contains a large number of people returning to the state from areas that have large number of cases. At least 12 of them had returned from Maharashtra while two had come back from West Bengal, and had been housed in a containment centre.

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The new cases in Ladakh and Sikkim are part of the recent trend in which there has been a sharp rise in infections in areas that were previously largely unaffected by the disease. In the north-east region, for example, only Assam and Tripura had significant number of cases two weeks ago. In the case of Tripura, almost all the infections were confined to a BSF camp in Dhalai district. But in the last couple of weeks, there has not just been a rapid rise of cases in Assam and Tripura, other states have also been reporting sizeable number of cases. Manipur has 385 cases now, while Nagaland and Mizoram have 100-plus. Meghalaya and Arunchal Pradesh have 44 and 83 cases respectively.

A majority of infected people in these states are people who have returned from other parts of the country. As reported in The Indian Express on Saturday, 80 per cent of the districts which reported their first novel Coronavirus positive case in the last three weeks are in north-eastern states.

On Friday, the number of new cases detected across the country crossed the 11,000 mark for the first time. There are now 3.09 lakh cases in the country.

Maharashtra, which had detected its first case on March 9, now has more than one lakh confirmed infections. It took the state 95 days to travel the distance. Many other regions in the world have made this journey much faster. New York, for example, moved from having 348 cases to 1.05 lakh in just 22 days. UK took 60 days to reach one lakh infections, while Italy and Spain took 63 days, according to data aggregator website Worldometer.