There have been more than half-a-million deaths in the six months after the first Covid-19 death was reported in China in the second week of January.

Growth rates vary, but every country has struggled to contain the pandemic, shows an analysis of the numbers. India’s first death was around two months after the first one in China. But its share in the global toll is now at a new high (chart 1).

The number of cases in India has outstripped most other countries. Only Brazil and the US have more cases. The US has three million cases while Brazil has 1.7 million, even as growth rates remain challenging for the rest of the world (chart 2).

The silver lining for India has been a relatively lower case fatality rate. This metric gives the number of people who died on account of the disease as a proportion of the total number of confirmed cases. There are around 4.6 deaths for every 100 confirmed cases in the world. The number for India is lower at 2.75. This is better than most other countries in the top five (chart 3).