India is expected to overtake Russia within a week, as Russia’s growth rate is only one -third of India’s growth.

On Saturday, India became the fourth nation in the world to cross five lakh coronavirus cases, and it is catching up fast to Russia which on Friday had registered 6,13,994 cases. While India is still adding only 17,000-18,000 cases a day, in contrast, US and Brazil are adding over 40,000 cases, it may soon catch-up to these economies given that its daily average growth rate is 3.6%.

India is expected to overtake Russia within a week, as Russia’s growth rate is only one -third of India’s growth. At the start of the third lockdown in India, on May 3, India’s growth rate was 7% while Russia’s was 7.9%. While this declined to 2.3% for Russia by June 1, India was still adding 5% more cases to its tally.

If testing is ramped up and India keeps growing at a similar rate, the country may be adding 30,000 cases within a fortnight. Despite increase in testing positivity rates in India have been going up. The country had a positivity rate (new cases upon new tests) of 8.1% on Thursday. Russia’s positivity rate, on the other hand, was just 2.5%.