India registers lowest Covid caseload in five months

New Delhi, Aug 10 (EFE).- India on Tuesday registered 28,204 fresh Covid-19 infections, the lowest daily caseload in nearly five months, after the country became the global epicenter of the pandemic during its second coronavirus wave that peaked in May.

According to the Indian health ministry, the number of cases recorded in the last 24 hours is the lowest in 147 days, a far cry from the daily caseloads of over 400,000 registered at the peak of the pandemic.

The number of deaths in the past 24 hours stood at 373, also much lower than the daily death tolls of over 4,000 that were witnessed in May.

So far, India has registered around 31.9 million infections and 428,682 deaths due to coronavirus.

However, a number of experts have questioned the official Covid figures and said that the real number of cases and deaths could be much higher.

According to a study on excess Covid-19 mortality in India by the Center for Global Development, published last month, the country witnessed as many as five million excess deaths during the pandemic, which suggests a much bigger Covid death toll.

However, Indian authorities have rejected the report as “completely misleading,” and insisted that extrapolating deaths based on the high mortality in other countries overlooks the “interplay” between factors that constitute the Indian population.

The Indian government has continued to focus on its massive vaccination drive, launched on Jan. 16, as the main strategy to fight the pandemic.

So far, the authorities have administered 514.5 million doses amid a population of over 1.3 billion, out of which 5.4 million doses were administered over the past 24 hours.

India has faced major challenges in meeting the demand of its vast population, and said in a statement on Tuesday that it currently has over 20.7 million doses available to continue vaccination. EFE

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