With the number of daily COVID-19 cases dipping below 4 lakh in the last three days, many researchers believe that the second wave of the pandemic has peaked in India.
Bloomberg has published a report suggesting that the number of new COVID infections in India has peaked, as per a new tracker developed by Cambridge Judge Business School and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
The researchers, however, have predicted an increase in the number of novel coronavirus cases in some states like Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Tripura over the next two weeks, according to the report.
India reported a record 4,14,188 new cases on May 6, about 32 percent higher than the world’s previous peak reported in the United States last year, according to the report. But India’s record was the result of just a fraction of the testing done in the US and vast undercounting, says the report, suggesting that the actual numbers could be way more than recorded.
The number of new coronavirus infections dipped to around 3.30 lakh on May 10, increasing slightly on May 11 at 3.48 lakh.
India’s seven-day average of reporting new coronavirus infections stood at 3,87,098 till May 10, according to JHU CSSE COVID-19 data.
As far as deaths are concerned, India reported 4,200 deaths on May 11, and researchers predicted daily fatalities could continue to remain near the unprecedented 4,000 level, the Bloomberg report mentioned.
The nation has been reporting over 3 lakh new infections per day for more than 20 straight days.
As of May 12, active cases stood at 37,04,099; accounting for 15.87 percent of the total number of people infected so far. The recovery rate was 83.04 percent with 1,93,82,642 people getting cured, as per MoHFW data.
Meanwhile, the fatality rate remains at 1.09 percent with 2,54,197 people losing their lives to COVID-19.
However, as per the government, India is seeing an early trend of decline in new cases and the number of deaths. As many as 18 states and Union Territories are showing plateauing in daily COVID-19 cases, even as 16 are reporting an increasing trend.
This decline has been mainly reported in the worst-affected states in the second COVID wave -- Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana.
On the other hand, Karnataka, Punjab, Assam, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura, apart from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal—where Assembly elections concluded recently — were among the 16 states and UTs where new cases are rising.
Also, the government’s hope lies in the fact that recoveries outnumbered new COVID-19 cases on May 10 for the first time in 61 days, with the recovery of 3,56,082 people, as per the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare data.
Besides, there has been a decline of 30,016 in the active caseload for the first time after two months on May 10.
Also, 182 districts showed a week-on-week increase in tests and a decline in positivity rate from April 29-May 5 as compared to 73 in April 15-21 period.
However, it’s not all rosy. About 42 percent of the districts, that is 310 out of a total of 734, are reporting a positivity rate more than the national average of around 21 percent.
Also, the number of deaths increased on May 10 to 3,876, as compared to 3,769 the previous day.
Meanwhile, health services remain overwhelmed, with several hospitals facing a shortage in oxygen and medical supplies. The latest surge has been attributed to a new variant of the virus first identified in India, having higher transmission rates, the World Health Organization said in its latest report.
