A look at COVID-19 statistics in India

By: Yash Gupte

The healthcare system in India was overburdened due to lack of availability of beds due to a rapid increase in cases during the waves. Shortage of oxygen was also reported among different states in India

The whole world came to a standstill during the early months of 2020 due to the outbreak of the coronavirus or the COVID-19 virus. Majority of the countries across the world were devastated by the sudden and extremely rapid spread of the coronavirus. Countries including India witnessed nationwide lockdowns as suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) in order to contain the spread of the virus. The pandemic claimed a huge number of lives during its peak in India. The pandemic resulted in disruption in global supply chains and this caused a huge economic setback for many countries across the world. Countries witnessed an immense slowdown in their economy. Also, the healthcare system in India was overburdened due to lack of availability of beds due to a rapid increase in cases during the waves. Shortage of oxygen was also reported among different states in India. The central government and state government had been doing their best to contain the spread of the virus but it could bring only little help as many people lost their dear ones due to the pandemic.

The WHO designated COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020. On January 30, 2020, Kerala, reported the country's first SARS-CoV-2 positive case. The number of instances thereafter sharply increased. Today, though the pandemic has been brought under control by vaccinating a large chunk of population in India and implementation of the appropriate measures of the government, the pandemic is still far from over. In this report, India Tracker takes a look at the current COVID-19 statistics in India.

India reported 1,957 new coronavirus cases taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 4,46,16,394, while the active cases dipped to 27,374, according to the data released by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The daily positivity rate stands at 0.71% in the country while the weekly positivity rate stands at 1.21%. The current active case load in India dropped from 28,079 on October 10^th to 27,374 on October 11^th. The number of patients recovered in last 24 hours stands at 2,654. The country has recorded 4.40 crore total recoveries till date. The current recovery rate stands at 98.75%. Coming over to the vaccination in the country, 219.04 doses of vaccines have been administered so far. India has witnessed a high testing rate since the beginning of the pandemic. The country has tested 89.74 crore samples so far. Around 5,28,822 lakh people have succumbed to the virus till date.

Out of the total 8835 covid-19 hospital beds in Delhi, 34 are currently occupied and 8801 are vacant. Mumbai has around 24,600 beds reserved for COVID-19 patients. As of January 31, there were 12,060 oxygen beds in Mumbai which dropped to 4,699 beds on 31^st May. Intensive care unit (ICU) beds decreased from 3,098 to 1,520 during the same time period, and the number of ventilators too decreased from 1,526 to 845. The reason behind this can be attributed to the decline in daily cases. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2,76,125 samples were tested in last 24 hours and out of those only 1957 tested positive. This shows a decline in positivity rate.

The COVID-19 pandemic had very adverse effects on people as many of them slipped into poverty, many lost their jobs and many lost their dear ones too. According to a World Bank analysis, approximately 80% of those who fell into poverty in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic were from India. Indians made up 5.6 crore of the 7 crore persons who became poor that year as a result of the pandemic's economic losses.