COVID-19: Big Cities In India Report More Number Of Cases

NEW DELHI: India has the world's third-biggest outbreak of the virus that causes COVID-19, below only the United States and Brazil. Infections are increasing steadily in the country. India recorded nearly 25,000 coronavirus cases on Monday. Currently, there are 7,20,346 coronavirus cases in the country and 20,174 people have died due to COVID-19 infection. From the past three days, there is a spike in the number of coronavirus cases. Experts say that India is still months away from reaching its peak.

The USA is the worst-hit nation with coronavirus and it has 2.88 million COVID-19 cases and Brazil has 1.6 million cases. The number of cases are rising in India but what comes as the ray of hope is the death rate in the country of 1.3 billion people continues to remain relatively low. The fatality rate of India is 2.8% which is lower than the global average of 4.7%.

Dr. Preeti Kumar, a vice-president at the Public Health Foundation of India said that "In our country, this is a concentrated outbreak and most of the urban population is falling prey to the pandemic. Although rural areas seem to be more under control but the virus has exploded in the heavily populated cities and this indicates that the epidemic will continue for some more time."

India’s top four metropolitan clusters - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai have nearly half of the nationwide coronavirus caseload. While Mumbai is the worst-hit city in the country, Delhi and Chennai have also been hit hard. Other major urban clusters affected by the deadly virus outbreak include Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Pune in Maharashtra, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Hyderabad in Telangana.

Dr. Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Science expressed hope that the number of coronavirus cases in Delhi continues to be static or decreases over the next few weeks.

Dr. Balram Bhargava, Director of General ICMR said, "Following a rise in COVID-19 cases in the country, the ICMR indicated that private hospitals should take greater responsibility for testing. ICMR claims that the expansion of testing should be undertaken in campaign mode and that private hospitals should be enrolled in order to play a more active role in the expansion of testing and make it available to the general public."