India’s second Covid-19 wave is proving to be a big nightmare.
As of today (April 8), the country has consistently recorded the highest daily new infections of the novel coronavirus in the world for the past week. India first surpassed its September 2020 peak of 98,000 cases on April 4, and over 100,000 people have been testing positive since then.
Earlier this year, Brazil and the US were epicentres of Covid-19 in the world. While the US was touching nearly 300,000 new infections every day in January, Brazil’s numbers were at over 50,000. Until mid-March, India’s new Covid-19 infections were around 12,000 to 25,000 a day.
But by March-end, these numbers saw a sudden spike, making India’s contributions to the global tally of new infections the largest in the world.
Within India, the western state of Maharashtra, which houses the country’s financial hub Mumbai, is facing a grave situation in terms of the spread of the disease. Mumbai alone has been consistently reporting over 10,000 cases per day this month.
What is particularly alarming is the high test positivity rate. On April 4, Mumbai reported a test positivity rate of roughly 25%, which means that one in four Covid-19 tests conducted came out positive. Since then, this rate has been hovering between 20% and 25%, which is still fairly high and means the infection is raging through the city.
The state of Maharashtra, which reported nearly 60,000 new cases in the past 24 hours, is currently under a partial lockdown and has a night and weekend curfew in place.