India Covid-19 numbers explained: Journey from 15 to 20 lakh cases has taken just nine days

As of now, the United States has 47.28 lakh people who have been infected with the virus, while Brazil has 28.01 lakh. At the rate India is growing right now, it seems poised to overtake Brazil in about a month’s time.

Within the country, Andhra Pradesh is continuing to write new records of its own. It is all set to cross 2 lakh cases on Friday, undertaking the journey from 1 lakh to 2 lakh cases in just 11 days. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had both taken twice that time to traverse that journey. Maharashtra’s further additions of one lakh cases have come in 14 days (2 to 3 lakh) and 11 days (3 to 4 lakh), but those happened at expanded baselines. As the total number of cases become bigger, the chances of higher number of new cases being detected every day also increases.

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In the ten days after crossing the one-lakh figure, Andhra Pradesh has added more than 94,000 cases. During the same time, Maharashtra which has more than double the caseload has found just about 96,000 new cases. Tamil Nadu, the other states with higher caseload than Andhra Pradesh, has detected only about 58,000 new cases during this period.

Andhra Pradesh’s growth rate has dropped off a bit, from a high of almost 10 per cent every day to just over 6 per cent now, but it still is in the midst of the most prolonged high growth curve that any state has had so far. On Friday, the state reported more than 10,000 new cases for the second successive day. It has almost 1.97 lakh cases now.

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Top ten states with maximum caseload:

Maharashtra reported more than 11,000 new cases for the second time in one week. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have also been adding large number of cases. With the detection of over 3,400 cases on Thursday, Bihar now has more infections than Gujarat.

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Daily new cases in India

The growth rate of total cases has continued to come down, and at just about 3.08 per cent per day, it has touched an all-time low. The national growth rate has continued to decline despite the fact that as many as 22 states and union territories have been growing faster. However, some key states, including the top two, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and five in top ten — three others being Delhi, Telangana and Gujarat — continue to grow at much slower rate. The growth rate in Delhi, in fact, has dropped below one per cent per day, and has remained there for almost two weeks now.

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