India’s fresh Covid count twice of Asia’s

| | New Delhi
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India’s fresh Covid count twice of Asia’s

Friday, 25 September 2020 | Navin Upadhyay | New Delhi

India’s fresh Covid count twice of Asia’s

Six months after India first imposed lockdown, the country has emerged as the worst global hotspot — so much so that India’s daily tally is more than double of Asia and one and a half times more than that of entire Europe. Put together, these two continents have more than 100 nations.

India’s daily spike is also 10 times more than the total number of cases recorded by 57 African nations.

When India declared the first of a series of lockdowns on March 25, the country had less than 500 Covid-19 cases and was placed at the bottom of the world tally. In six months, the cases have shot up to nearly 6 million, and India now occupies the second spot in the world.

During the same period, barring India all other Asian countries have staged remarkable fightbacks against coronavirus. On Thursday, while India recorded nearly 87,000 cases, 48 Asian countries put together reported just 40,000 cases. India’s close neighbours like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal recorded just 1,666, 533, 11 and 1,172 cases respectively.

While India is nearing 6 million caseloads, the next in the Asian list is Iran with just 4.32 lakh cases. Bangladesh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and

Turkey occupy third, fourth, fifth, and sixth spots with 3 lakh plus cases. Pakistan has 3,07,418 cases.

The latest trend shows that while Asian countries have come to terms with the virus — at least 10 of them recorded no fresh case on Thursday and 15 of them recorded new cases in double-digit only — Europe is seeing a resurgence in the number of cases and talks of fresh lockdowns have begun to do the rounds.

India’s situation is worrisome because the country continues to see bigger spikes week after weeks. The number of cases is impacted by low testing on weekends or reduction in the number of testing due to any other reason.

The huge margin of error in antigen testing has clouded the overall scenario.

In many States, ever since the antigen testing has been introduced, the positivity rate has drastically come down. It clearly shows that the real picture of coronavirus spread is far worse than reflected by the outcome of the tests.

The situation in Africa is far better than Asia. As many as 57 nations of the continent registered just 8,000 new cases on Thursday with an average of fewer than 150 cases. Of them, around 16 countries didn’t register a single case while nearly two dozens logged cases in double-digit numbers.

The European situation is becoming alarming again with the United Kingdom, France and Spain registering around 10,000 new cases every day, but the USA has stabilised and numbers are also declining in some of the worst-affected nations of South America.

However, India is showing no sign of plateauing out. While some States like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are reversing the trend and registering a reduced number of cases during the last one week, new States are replacing them with far bigger numbers.

For example, Kerala reported 6,324 new cases and 21 persons died in the State during the last 24 hours due to Covid-19. This is the biggest single-day spike for the State which boasted of taking the best possible measures to contain the pandemic. The State has so far not ever crossed 50,000 new cases in a day.

With winter now knocking at the door, India will have to hope and pray that the situation is salvaged through some divine intervention. The human factor has paid little results so far.

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