India overtakes Brazil as 2nd worst-hit country by Covid-19

New Delhi, Sep 7 (efe-epa).- India recorded a total of 4,204,613 confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Monday, surpassing Brazil as the world’s second worst-hit country by the pandemic, following a week of registering record number of fresh infections per day.

With 90,802 fresh cases confirmed by the Ministry of Health in the last 24 hours, the second most populous country in the world is also the nation where the disease has been spreading the quickest, at rates even higher than that of the United States, which has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world so far.

Monday’s data represents the highest number of Covid-19 cases reported in India and by any country in the world in a single day since the start of the pandemic earlier this year.

However, the south Asian country has one of the lowest mortality rates from the disease and recorded 1,016 deaths on Monday, taking total number of Covid-19 deaths to 71,642.

According to the US’ John Hopkins University, India, with a mortality rate of 1.7 percent, ranks 20th in this regard, far below countries such as Mexico, which has the highest mortality rate (10.7 percent), and Spain (5.9 percent).

The Indian authorities remain optimistic about the recovery rates, which have been increasing almost as quickly as the number of fresh cases. According to the Ministry of Health, there has been a recovery of 77.3 percent of all recorded cases.

In this scenario and after more than five months of lockdown, several of the larger Indian cities on Monday restarted the operation of their metro services as a part of phase 4 of the process to lift restrictions to check the spread of Covid-19.

New Delhi began operations of its metro transport, the most extensive one in the country, by resuming one of its six main lines, and has planned to restart all its routes over the course of the week.

Despite the rapid spread of the coronavirus, the south Asian nation has decided to focus on the revival of the economy after recording one of the worst declines in its history in terms of growth.

According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, India’s GDP fell by 23.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the current fiscal year (April-June), with negative results in almost all economic sectors as a result of strict lockdown measures against the pandemic. EFE-EPA

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