India adds 200,000 Covid-10 cases in a day; Maharashtra cases slow down

Numbers rising faster than US, Brazil combined

A surge in Covid-19 cases in other states has seen India’s overall growth rate of daily new cases remain high even as top contributor Maharashtra’s has slowed down over the last few days.

India’s weekly growth rate in new Covid cases was in excess of 60 per cent, even as the number for Maharashtra has slowed down from its recent highs. This has led India’s overall daily additions to eclipse that of the United States of America and Brazil combined, show numbers from global tracker Our World in Data. The three countries account for the maximum number of new cases globally (see chart 1).

Maharashtra still accounts for the maximum number of daily cases within India. However, the weekly growth rate has fallen from over 40 per cent to under 20 per cent, shows an analysis of data from independent tracker Covid19india.org. Other states in the top five list with the most number of daily cases such as Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka now show higher growth rates (see chart 2).

The daily number of vaccine doses administered nationally has been stagnant at around 3.5 million doses a day. Around 8.3 per cent of the total population has received at least one dose so far (see chart 3). A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it will take till around May 2022 to finish vaccinating the entire population if one goes at this rate, though the availability of new vaccines may help accelerate the process. India’s case fatality rate of 1.23 per cent is still lower than that of other countries in the top five list, barring Turkey (0.86 per cent), though there have reportedly been issues with accurate reporting of deaths.