Statsguru: Six charts show daily Covid cases, testing down in India

Last week, India registered a little over 7,000 Covid-19 cases. Neighbouring Bhutan reported over 8,000. While infections in India have declined to a two-year low, Europe and some economies in Asia are still witnessing high daily Covid-19 cases. In France, daily infections averaged over 100,000 for the second consecutive week. South Korea’s daily average between April 1 and April 7 was over 200,000 cases. Two weeks ago, the East Asian country had registered a record of over 600,000 cases in a day. The average in that week was 400,000 cases. The daily caseload in the United States was 25 times more than India’s (see chart 1).

India’s proportion of global daily cases has also declined drastically. On April 7, the country accounted for 0.1 per cent of the world’s daily infections. During the peak of the second wave, over 50 per cent of the world’s daily Covid-19 infections were from India (see chart 2).

India is also recording a decline in the proportion of global deaths. On April 7, India accounted for 0.2 per cent of the world’s death count; the proportion was nearly 40 per cent during the second wave (see chart 3).

While cases have declined in India, three states — Delhi, Maharashtra and Kerala — still account for almost 48 per cent of the country’s daily Covid infections. In August 2020, these three states reported a high of 77 per cent of all daily Covid cases in India. In May 2021, this percentage was 72 per cent. And in January 2022, two-thirds of India’s daily cases came from these states (see chart 4).

Along with cases, the number of Covid tests has also fallen. An average of 474,764 tests were conducted in the first seven days of April, compared to 1.6 million in January. Testing was at a 21-month low — one-fifth of the peak of 2.2 million in June 2021 (see chart 5).

India still lags behind the world in genomic sampling. The government last released a report on genomic sequencing in January, and the country had sampled 0.6 per cent of infections. South Africa has tested 1 per cent of its positive cases for genomic sequences, while the US has achieved a sampling rate of 3.8 per cent. England, meanwhile, has conducted genomic sampling of 8.3 per cent of positive infections (see chart 6).

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