India overtakes Italy in coronavirus cases to become 6th most affected country in the world

Even as the nationwide lockdown continues to be imposed, India has officially surpassed Italy in the total number of COVID-19 cases. Italy is one of the worst affected countries as a result of the pandemic, along with the USA and Spain.

On June 5, India registered a record spike of 9887 cases, taking the total cases to 2,36,657. With a total of 294 deaths recorded in 24 hours as on June 6, 8 am, the total number of deaths stands at 6642. Based on data from the Johns Hopkins University, India is currently the 6th worst affected country in the world following the US, Brazil, Russia, Spain, and the UK. Even as the country has been recording over 9000 cases consecutively in the last three days, the situation seems hopeful as the recovery rate is also high. “The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 1,15,942, while 1,14,072 people have recovered. Thus, around 48.20 percent patients have recovered so far,” a senior health ministry official reportedly stated. According to a report by a news agency, the health ministry’s updated data records the highest number of confirmed cases in the country in Maharashtra at 80,229, followed by Tamil Nadu at 28,694, Delhi at 26,334, Gujarat at 19,094, Rajasthan at 10,084, Uttar Pradesh at 9733 and Madhya Pradesh at 8996. Of the total 6642 deaths, Maharashtra has registered 2849 fatalities, followed by Gujarat with 1190, Delhi with 708, Madhya Pradesh with 384, West Bengal with 366, Uttar Pradesh with 257, Tamil Nadu with 232, Rajasthan with 218, Telangana with 113 and Andhra Pradesh with 73 deaths.

COVID-19 has claimed the lives of more than 398530 people and infected over 6866120 people across the world. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. As the death toll and overall cases began rising rapidly across the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency and the outbreak has now been labelled a pandemic.