Bhubaneswar: With coronavirus cases nearing 3 lakhs, India has now surpassed the United Kingdom and taken the fourth spot on the list of nations worst hit by the pandemic. Only the US, Brazil and Russia have more coronavirus cases now. Russia currently has close to 5 lakh cases and Brazil 7.7 lakh. The US has the maximum number — more than 20 lakh.
As of Friday morning, there are 2,98,191 positive cases of COVID-19 as per the reports of Health Ministry officials; recording the highest of 11,442 cases on June 11.
The coronavirus numbers have been increasing exponentially since the May 24, when India entered the list of top 10. It has taken just 18 days to reach the fourth slot.
Although India has seen a higher recovery rate of around 48 per cent, the total active cases are on the rise taking the count to 1.39 lakh. However, the recovered cases accounts to 1.42 lakh. India has witnessed around 8300 deaths due to the disease which is way less when compared to Spain and the UK which have recorded 27,000 and 42,000 deaths respectively.
Following the relaxations of the lockdown norms announced by the Government of India, the total number of cases has increased. Metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai have seen escalations in the number of cases and are now high-risk zones.
Amid rapidly increasing cases of COVID-19 in the country, Dr. Balram Bhargava, Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), debunked the rumours of community transmission in the country. He said, ‘India is such a large country and prevalence is very low. India is not in community transmission.’
He added that lockdown and containment have been successful in preventing the rapid spread of the virus. He, however, added that a large proportion of the population is still susceptible and risk is higher in urban (1.09 times) and urban slums (1.89 times) than rural areas. He said that the infection fatality rate is very low in the country with 0.08 per cent.