Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
The WHO designated COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020. Image Source: IANS
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.
China has once again become a cause of concern due to the deteriorating COVID-19 situation. An epidemiologist and health economist named Eric Feigl-Ding expressed alarm over China's underreporting of Covid-related deaths in a series of tweets on Monday. In the next three months, he predicted that there will probably be millions of deaths. As the cases in China and other countries are rising alarmingly, Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, presided over a high-level meeting on December 21 to review the COVID-19 situation in India and the public health system's readiness for surveillance, containment, and management of COVID-19. He said that the COVID is not over yet and has directed all the concerned departments to be on alert and strengthen surveillance.
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 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 163 new coronavirus cases taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 4,46,77,739, while the active cases dipped to 3,380 according to the data released by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The active cases comprise 0.01 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has increased to 98.80 percent. 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 98.80 percent. Coming over to the vaccination in the country, 220.02 crore 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 5,30,690 lakh people have succumbed to the virus till date.
Source: Media Reports
India has not reported more than 300 cases in a single day in the month of December. The country reported maximum (291) cases on December 1, 2022. Around 185 cases were registered on December 21. The data shows that the COVID-19 situation in India is still under control and the reason behind this can be attributed to the mass vaccination drive launched by the government.
Out of the total 8275 covid-19 hospital beds in Delhi, 14 are currently occupied and 8261 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 31st 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, 1,25,361 samples were tested in last 24 hours and out of those only 163 tested positive. This shows a decline in positivity rate.
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 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 percent 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.
Though the COVID-19 situation in India is not grave as compared to the other countries around the world, the government and the people in the country must be vigilant. The memories of first and second wave in the country continues to haunt the citizens. This time, it is important to be prepared before a new wave hits us.
