India Covid-19 numbers explained, Aug 26: Apparent resurgence in Delhi, Kerala, Telangana

For most of August, India has been reporting the highest number of new cases in the world, more than even the United States and Brazil, the only two countries which have a bigger caseload than India. But unlike the United States, India had never recorded more than 70,000 cases in a single day. The United States has breached that mark on four occasions, its highest being a little more than 74,000 in July. In this month, the United States has been recording less than 50,000 cases, which has gone down to about 35,000 in the last few days.

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India’s population is close to four times that of the United States, and almost six times that of Brazil. It would not be surprising, therefore, that the level achieved on Wednesday becomes the new normal for India for some time, and go even further than this.

A resurgence seems to be happening in Delhi, Kerala, Telangana as well. Delhi reported more than 1,600 new cases, the highest since July 11. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the number of tests would now be doubled, to almost 40,000, to check the further spread of the virus. This could lead to the numbers rising again, at least in the short term. Telangana is already experiencing such a trend. The state has almost doubled its testing numbers in the last one week, and consequently started to discover many more cases than it was doing earlier. On Wednesday, it reported about 2,800 new cases. Till a few days ago, it was reporting between 1,400 and 1,800 cases.

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Daily rise in Covid-19 cases in India

Meanwhile, a central team is visiting Bihar to assess the situation there. Bihar had been one of the fastest growing states in the last few weeks, though there has been a minor slowdown, of late. From less than 10,000 cases at the start of July, Bihar has seen its numbers grow to more than 1.26 lakh now. The central team is said to have expressed concern at the state government’s reliance mainly on rapid antigen tests, whose results are not as reliable as the RT-PCR tests. Also, most of the positive patients in Bihar have been put in home quarantine, where monitoring and surveillance is unlikely to be as strict as in institutional quarantine.

The central government’s teams are also visiting Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where the spread of the disease seems disproportionate to the area and population. Puducherry has close to 12,000 people infected with the virus, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has almost 3,000 infections.

Top ten states with maximum caseload:

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