COVID-19 Cases Growing Rapidly In India Than Any Of Top 10 Worst Hit Nations

India is witnessing a rise in the number of coronavirus cases and has crossed the 14-lakh mark on Monday. Out of the 14,35,453 cases, the country has more than 4.85 lakh active cases, while 9.17 lakh patients have already recovered.

India is now the third-worst hit nation with the novel coronavirus after the United States and Brazil. However, the government of India is stating that the country is in a better position. On a broader look at the month's data shows that the number of people affected with COVID-19 infection are increasing and has become one of the worst-affected countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a 'high-throughput' testing facilities in Noida, Mumbai, and Kolkata on Monday. He said that India is in a much better position than other countries in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Since last week, more than 40,000 fresh coronavirus cases have been added every day, and the US added a little less than 55,000 cases a day. On Monday, India registered nearly 50,000 fresh cases, just behind the US.

Despite having the third-highest coronavirus cases, India is witnessing a huge spike in the number of cases registered among the 10 worst-affected countries.

The seven-day rolling average of India's daily additions is also increasing and competing with that of Brazil and the US. According to 'Our World in Data,' as of 26 July, on an average, India added 44,000 cases; the same was for Brazil at 45,600. The US is on the top of the list with an average of 66,600 daily additions.

Epidemiologist Giridhar R Babu speaking to a news channel said that "India started with just a few labs and now it has come a long way. The country expanded the testing facilities and cases are being detected. We need to care about the actual number of cases, because improved testing helps to save more lives through early isolation and timely management."

Doubling time of cases can be used as an indicator to measure the effect of the pandemic. Doubling Time is defined as the daily rise in cumulative cases expressed in terms of the number of days taken for cases to double. Generally, a period of seven days is considered. At the time the lockdown was imposed on March 25, the doubling rate of COVID-19 cases was 3.4 days. On June 12th, the Union Health Ministry said that the doubling time of coronavirus cases in India has improved to 17.4 days.

Compared to the US and Brazil, India is not showing any improvement since a month. The number of coronavirus cases are climbing high in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Meghalaya.