One out of every four people in the world who caught the Covid-19 infection last week was from India. The country’s share in the week’s fresh global cases rose to 26.2%, having crossed the quarter mark for the first time. In deaths, India’s share rose marginally to 16.9%.
Meanwhile, new infections recorded on Monday dipped to a seven-day low of 59,041 following a sharp decrease of nearly 40% in the number of tests since Friday’s record high of 10,30,000 tests. There were 848 deaths reported on Monday, the lowest daily toll since August 4, when the number was 842, as per data collated from state governments.
With the number of cases reported in the country last week rising to over 4,50,000, India accounted for over 26% of global cases. The country’s share in global cases in the previous week (August 10-16) was 23.9%. In the week before that (August 3-9), it was 22.7%, as per data from worldometers.info. Overall, India has a 13% share in Covid-19 cases in the world so far.
In deaths, India’s share last week was 16.9%, as compared with 16.8% and 15.2% in the previous two weeks, respectively.
Dip in Covid deaths in Maharashtra
In keeping with the trend of a dip in cases seen every Monday, fresh infections detected in most states were lower than the previous day’s numbers. Some of the exceptions were Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Chhattisgarh, where the count rose slightly from Sunday’s tallies.
Madhya Pradesh was the only state that reported its highest single-day spike in cases on Monday, recording 1,292 fresh infections. Maharashtra and Mumbai recorded a significant dip in Covid fatalities on Monday. The state reported 212 fatalities, which was the lowest in 34 days, while Mumbai reported 20 deaths, lowest in 105 days since May 11.
A civic official said that the plunge in deaths though was mainly because of less reporting during the weekend. “It was also a festival. The deaths will reflect in the next few days once hospitals update their reports,” a civic official said, adding that Mumbai was still clocking an average of 40-50 deaths daily.
Maharashtra also added 11,015 new cases on Monday taking the total Covid cases to 6,93,398. Mumbai added 743 cases, lowest in 19 days, taking the total number of cases to 1,37,096.
Tamil Nadu added 5,967 fresh cases and 97 deaths on Monday, which pushed the case tally to 3,85,352 and the cumulative toll to 6,614.
