Nearly one-third of infections are now coming from rural and semi-urban areas, and if this trend continues then by the month-end rural and semi-urban districts will account for half of India’s total infections.
In terms of the number of districts with 20 deaths, this has nearly tripled from 35 to 91.As India readies to cross two million infections by Friday, it has 158 districts — of the total of 734 — that report more than 1,000 Covid-19 infections as compared to just 87 a month ago. And 418 districts with more than 500 infections as compared to 267 then.
Nearly one-third of infections are now coming from rural and semi-urban areas, and if this trend continues then by the month-end rural and semi-urban districts will account for half of India’s total infections.
And while it took five days to get one lakh infections a month ago, it takes just two days now; and this is despite more tests being done using Rapid Antigen Tests that detect less infections than the conventional RT-PCR tests.
The same geographical spread is visible when it comes to deaths as well. Just around 21 districts recorded more than 50 deaths a month ago; this is up to 48 today.
In terms of the number of districts with 20 deaths, this has nearly tripled from 35 to 91. During this period over 100 districts had recorded their first death.
On Wednesday, Uttar Pradesh will become the 6th state to record more than one lakh cases. It is, though, still recording slower a slower growth — primarily due to much lower testing per million population — than Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Uttar Pradesh is adding 4,500 cases every day versus 9,000 in Andhra Pradesh, 5,500 in Karnataka, 6,300 in Tamil Nadu, 1,080 in Delhi and 9,585 in Maharashtra.
Health facilities in some of these regions are woefully inadequate. Even if the government does add more infrastructure, it will need to have more doctors and nurses. Uttar Pradesh has just one allopathic doctor for every 4,000 people, whereas the national average is 2.5 times higher with one doctor for every 1,500 people. The WHO norm is for one doctor for every 1,000 people. The situation in terms of nurses is worse. UP has just 0.6 nurses per 1,000 persons while the national average is 2.2 and the WHO norm is 3 per 1,000.
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