COVID-19: India goes past grim milestone of one million cases

India on Thursday became the third country around the world after the USA and Brazil to hit a million coronavirus, with 36,247 new cases taking the nation’s total to 1,004,652 and 690 people who lost their lives fatalities putting the total to 25,594.

Experts guess the next million to take less than a month as the doubling rate views at 20.6 days and say the focus now needs to shift to rural parts of the nation that traditionally have been outside the reach of adequate health care mechanisms and where new hotbeds are now feared to pop up.

On Thursday, India had 343,268 active cases and the case fatality rate (CFR) — the proportion of people who lost their lives to the infection from among known infections was 2.5 per cent. The US, which has 3,648,250 cases and 140,518deaths, has a fatality rate of 3.9 per cent and Brazil, with 1,978,236 cases and 75,697 infections, is at 3.8 per cent.

MAHARASHTRA SEES NEW OVER 8,000 CASES

Maharashtra on Thursday notched a new high of 8,641 COVID-19 cases and also recorded the second-highest death count, as Thane district recorded its highest figure of fatalities, health officials said here.

The number of fatalities in the state again shot above the 200-mark to 266 on Thursday - the second-highest after July 4's 295 deaths. Thursday's new cases surpassed the previous high of 8,139 on July 11. With the fresh fatalities, the state's death toll went up to 11,194 while the total cases touched 2,84,281, both highest in the country.

The recovery rate in the western state, however, increased from 55.37 per cent a day earlier to 55.63 per cent on Thursday, while the mortality rate stood at 3.94 per cent. The Health Department said that of the total cases till date, 114,648 are active cases. On the positive side, 5,527 recovered persons returned home on Thursday, taking the total number of discharged patients to 158,140.

The MMR (Thane division) remains on the brink as deaths spiral and cases pile up, with the current toll at 7,846 and a staggering 4,473 new patients, pushing up the number of cases to 188,373 on Thursday. Thane district's cases are 69,471 with 1,907 fatalities, making it the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.

Pune district continues to zoom ahead by notching 46,668 cases, with the death toll increasing to 1,237 on Thursday. The Pune division's death toll reached 1,675 with the case tally touching 53,662 - but it remains far behind MMR.

Nashik division has 832 fatalities and 18,177 cases, followed by Aurangabad division notching 414 deaths and 10,714 cases, and Akola division recording 178 fatalities and 4,167 cases. Kolhapur Division has reported 87 deaths and 3,550 cases, Latur division 101 fatalities and 2,305 cases, and Nagpur division 30 deaths and 3,114 cases.

Of the eight divisions in the state, only Nagpur did not report any fatalities on Thursday, while only Chandrapur (out of total 36) remains a 'zero COVID death district' till date, though all divisions and districts have notched fresh cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 7,10,394, while those in institutional quarantine went down to 42,833.

(With inputs from IANS)