COVID-19: How India’s Coronavirus growth looks like in the beginning of 2021?

A year of panic, endless curfews and lockdowns with masks, sanitisers becoming the new normal, the Coronavirus situation is India now seems to be flattening out. While new COVID-19 cases will surface in coming months as well, the situation is expected to see a steady decline going forward and possibly irreversible. According to a report by The Indian Express, this was the situation that India is in and will be. It is to note that the new infections are currently around 20,000 in a day and this has come down from the peak of 97,894 infections a day India recorded on September 17 last year. Now, the growth curve is flattening out with the number of new single day infections in a downward spiral.

In the next few months, this is expected to go down even more and there is a strong possibility that India will nowhere go near the COVID-19 peak it attained last year. However, this does not mean that there won’t be a spike in single day cases. The cases can increase on some days as the viral transmission will not stop in an abrupt manner. But the minor single day surges do not impact the bigger picture of Coronavirus growth in India. This is also different from what other countries in Europe and the US witnessed. There, the second and third wave, brought in more cases than the first wave. In fact in India, the number of active cases are also decreasing when compared to the recoveries. However, that has majorly been attributed to the higher base.

In terms of death toll due to the COVID-19 infection, 1.5 lakh people have succumbed to it taking India to have the third highest death toll in the world. This is followed by the United States and Brazil. According to the report, the death toll trajectory has been in the shape of a bell as August, September and October last year had certain days where the deaths crossed 1000 in a day. This number is now below 300.

The idea throughout 2020 was to ramp up testing and test people for COVID as much as possible. From mere a few thousand testing samples in March 2020 to testing more than 10 lakh samples now, it is easier to analyse the current COVID-19 situation in the country. These testing numbers also went up to 15 lakh on some occasions. When compared to the last few months, the doubling time has also increased now. Initially, the doubling time was considered as an important indicator but this has been rendered irrelevant now, the report noted. Last year, the country also saw a time where the growth rate was more than 6 per cent and the number of Coronavirus cases doubled in 10 days. However, the doubling time has increased consequently now and the growth rate has come to 0.2 per cent.

Thanks to the recent emergency approval of the Coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, the vaccination drive against the novel Coronavirus can be started this month and the transmission is expected to be controlled in the next few months. So far, more than 10 million cases have been reported in India.