From Lockdown 4.0 to Unlock-1: India's COVID-19 progress report
As India nears ‘Unlock-1,’ to be initiated from June 8, the number of cases have crossed 1.83 lakh-mark by the end of the fourth phase of lockdown. As a part of the country’s first stage of phased-exit, norms and regulations will be relaxed to a great extent.
As India nears ‘Unlock-1,’ to be initiated from June 8, the number of cases have crossed 1.83 lakh-mark by the end of the fourth phase of lockdown.
As a part of the country’s first stage of phased-exit from the coronavirus-enforced nationwide lockdown, norms and regulations will be relaxed to a great extent.
On Sunday (May 31) the country witnessed the highest single-day spike in the number of COVID-19 cases with an increase of 8,380 cases. Meanwhile, more than 86,000 patients have recovered and the death toll due to COVID-19 touched 5,164.
Trajectory of cases
India has seen a huge spike in cases in the last phase of the lockdown. The cases are peaking with each day and the country has become the ninth worst-hit nation in the world with close to two lakh cases in the last three months.
Maharashtra (65,168 cases), Tamil Nadu (21,184) and Delhi (18,549) are the worst-affected states with almost 60 per cent of the country’s caseload.
Trajectory of deaths
Nearly half of the coronavirus-linked deaths have been reported in the past 14 days amid Lockdown 4.0. To date, the country has reported 5,164 deaths over the period of the last three months.
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The country reported the highest 265 deaths in a single day on May 30, in the fourth phase of the lockdown. Gujarat, around six deaths per hundred patients, has the highest death rate among the top worst-hit states.
Death and recovery rate
The low death rate in cases of COVID-19 is one of the positive aspects of the fight against coronavirus in India. However, the death rate in India has been constantly declining over the past six weeks.
The death rate in India was above 3 per cent until the fourth phase of lockdown began. It was 3.2 per cent on May 17 while it declined to 2.8 per cent on May 31. Interestingly, it has constantly followed the downward steep even as the number of cases increased each day.
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Rise in the recovery rate in India is another positive side to look at amid the pandemic. As on May 31, nearly half of the patients reported recovered from the COVID-19. The actual recovery rate stands at 47.8 per cent on Sunday. It was at 37.5 per cent at the beginning of the fourth phase of lockdown.
Number of tests conducted
The country increased COVID-19 testing slowly after the second phase of the lockdown (April 14). Currently, it is testing over a lakh samples every day for more than 13 days as of Sunday.
The fourth phase saw results of around 16 lakh tests in fourteen days from May 17, which is around 42 per cent of the total tests done since the beginning of the lockdown.
In India, there are 669 labs testing samples of suspected COVID-19 patients across the country, of which the government owns 466 labs while 203 labs are privately owned.
Migrant movement
Movement of migrant workers across different states by means of Shramik Special trains arranged by the central government saw a huge displacement of people in the country in the last phase of the lockdown.
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Migrant destination states such as Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha witnessed a spike in the number of cases following the arrival of the migrants to their natives.
Even as the number of cases appear to be low in these states, the rate of increase and test positivity saw a big surge over the past 14 days.