COVID-19: India’s death toll surpasses 47,000

As mentioned in our opening summary, India has become the country with the fourth-highest number of deaths linked to COVID-19 in the world.

Its fatalities jumped by 942 on Thursday, taking its total to 47,033.

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The rise in deaths pushed India’s toll past that of the UK, which had recorded 46,791 fatalities to date, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University.

The UK toll was revised down further on Wednesday to 41,329 due to a new method of counting being introduced.

India also recorded its biggest single-day spike in cases with 66,999 new infections on Thursday, pushing the total to nearly 2.4 million.

Experts say the virus has been spreading rapidly within communities across India. Because India is such a densely populated country, tracing the chain of transmission is difficult, they say.

India brought in Covid-19 restrictions in March. It stopped all international flights and entered a strict lockdown that lasted nearly two months.

But the restrictions came at a devastating economic and human cost, and after India reopened at the end of June and testing increased, case numbers soared.

Many states are continuing to enforce lockdowns in specific areas as clusters of the virus emerge.

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Source: BBC