India adds over 26,000 new Covid-19 cases, highest daily in 3 months

New Delhi, Mar 15 (efe-epa).- India on Monday added 26,291 new Covid-19 infections, registering the highest single-day spike in almost three months in a country where the everyday number had seen a steep decline.

The federal health ministry data said showed 118 new deaths due to the virus in the last 24 hours from Sunday morning, which takes the total number of Covid-19 fatalities to 158,725.

The number of daily cases has been steadily rising for the past five days after months of decrease since the peak in September when the country recorded 100,000 infections a day.

The last time more than 26,000 infections were recorded within 24 hours was on Dec 20.

With 26,291 new cases, the overall tally of infections has now jumped to more than 11.38 million, which is the third-highest in the world after the United States, with more than 547,000 fatalities and 30 million infections, and Brazil, with 278,000 deaths and 11.5 million cases.

According to the health ministry data, there are over 219,000 active cases in India.

Despite being one of the worst-affected countries by the virus, India has still been able to more or less keep the virus under control with one of the lowest death rates.

With a death rate of 114 per million population, well below the global average of 339.2, the situation is considerably better in India than in many other nations where the virus has wreaked havoc.

Brazil, with 273,124 deaths, has 1,279 fatalities per million population and the United Kingdom (125,168 deaths) has 1,837 victims per million population.

It is generally agreed that with a younger population and that too with a relatively low prevalence of comorbidities, much of Asia has not seen the levels of mortality like in Europe, the UK, or the US.

However, some experts have questioned the data transparency to indicate that number of deaths in India could be higher than reported by the government.

Findings of a serological survey in New Delhi suggested that more than half of the people in the world’s second-most populated country may have contracted the virus.

The survey opened up the barrage of questions about insufficient data of those hit by the virus.

The Indian Medical Research Council (ICMR) guidelines stipulate that deaths of people with suspected or probable Covid-19 should be included in mortality data.

However, the government has not shared any information about whether state data on deaths included suspected and probable cases.

But so far, the government data on deaths that include suspected or probable patients is unknown. EFE-EPA

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