New Delhi
According to data from the federal health ministry, with over 90,000 new coronavirus cases, India reported a global daily-record on Sunday.
There were 90,632 new cases in the 24 hours to Sunday, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, while the number of deaths rose by 1,065 to 70,626.
The country is set to pass Brazil on Monday as the second most affected country by total infections and will be behind only the United States, which has 6.4 million cases and nearly 193,000 deaths.
Coronavirus cases in India have reached 4.1 million and about 3.2 million affected people have been treated so far, the government data showed.
Medical experts said the country was seeing a second wave of the pandemic in some parts of the country, and that case numbers have surged because of increased testing and the easing of restrictions on public movement.
The government will partially restore metro train services in the national capital of New Delhi from Monday.
The pandemic will not finish this year as the virus has spread from big cities to other parts of the country, Randeep Guleria, the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said in an interview with India Today TV.
The number of cases could continue to rise before the curve flattens out, he said. India has logged the world’s largest daily coronavirus caseload for almost a month even as its government pushes to open businesses to revive a contracting economy.
With resurgence in Covid cases in the national capital, the ICU bed crisis could spell doom as the Unlock 4 is already afoot, with more people out on the street and many sidelining the use of mask and social distancing.
Many private hospitals having ICU with ventilator ward facilities have already run out of beds. Of the 93 Covid-19 hospitals where ICU with ventilators facility is available, 23 showed full occupancy on the Delhi government’s Corona App till Sunday morning.
The availability of ICU beds with ventilators in these hospitals has gone down to zero. Such hospitals include giant private and corporate names like Max, Fortis, Indraprastha Apollo, and Aakash Healthcare.
The Center-run Ram Manohar Lohia and municipality-owned Hindu Rao hospitals, which are among the 74 out of the 93, have less than five beds with ICU and ventilator facility in each.—Reuters
