India has witnessed yet another record number of new COVID-19 deaths in a single day. The disease, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or simply coronavirus, continues to exact a punishing toll on the country and its people.
Tuesday saw the country record 781 fatalities due to the disease. This is the highest number of deaths recorded by the country in a single day thus far. India – once relatively lightly-affected by the global pandemic – now exceeds 1.5 million cases. Tuesday also saw India’s second-highest daily increase in cases, with 49,292 new SARS-CoV-2 infections. This follows Sunday’s new case count of more than 50,000 – the country’s highest daily increase in cases to date.
At the time of writing, India has confirmed 1,538,899 SARS-CoV-2 infections. Of the confirmed cases, 513,409 are active. India retains its position as the third worst-affected country in the world by COVID-19. Only Brazil and the United States have confirmed more cases of COVID-19.
Fortunately, 991,205 people have recovered from COVID-19 in India. Nonetheless, a substantial number of people have lost their lives as highlighted by the 781 fatalities recorded on Tuesday. 34,285 people have lost their lives to COVID-19 in India at the time of writing.
In recent days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged continued vigilance, while touting efforts undertaken in India to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) and scale up the pace of testing. “Today, COVID-19 recovery rate in our country is better than others. Our fatality rate is much less than most of the other countries,” he said. “We managed to save the lives of lakhs of people.”
Nonetheless, Modi has emphasised that “we need to remain vigilant.” As such, he has urged the citizenry to continue practices such as “social distancing” and “wearing masks.” These steps, he said, “are necessary in our fight against the virus.”
At the global level, there have been 16,929,142 confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections at the time of writing. Of the confirmed COVID-19 cases thus far, 5,774,248 are active. Of these, 99 percent denote 5,707,642 patients who are in mild condition. The remaining one percent of patients – translating to 66,606 people – are in serious or critical condition. 10,490,621 people have recovered from SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately, 664,273 people have lost their lives.
