Explained: India's COVID-19 caseload after lockdown 3.0 in 6 charts

As the country enters its fourth phase of coronavirus-forced lockdown, the number of cases at the end of lockdown 3.0 crossed the 90,000-mark.

On Sunday (May 17), India recorded its highest single day spike while reporting 4,987 positive COVID-19 cases.

A day before the first phase of nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 24 midnight, the country reported 519 cases (March 24), and increased to 10,815 cases by the beginning of the second phase on April 14 midnight.

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Lockdown 3.0 which began on May 3 midnight, when the cases had reached 40,263, and the death toll was 2,487, later rose to 90,927 cases and 4,987 deaths as on May 17 the end of the third phase.

The testing game

India ramped up its COVID-19 testing capacity to 90,000 tests per day during the third phase of the lockdown. On May 1, the country conducted 72,453 tests in a day while on May 17, it reached 93,365 tests per day. To date, about 22.27 lakh tests have been conducted.

Currently, 522 testing facilities are operating in India, of which 371 are government-owned labs while 151 private labs have been permitted to conduct the COVID-19 tests.

Movement of migrants

The Shramik special trains began operating since May 1 to drop migrant workers from different states back to their natives.

First such train departed from Hyderabad to Hatia in Jharkhand, while the number of trains was later increased.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, 602 trains had ferried around seven lakh migrants to different states as per the latest update. However, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha were the states to see the maximum influx of migrant workers. Subsequently, a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases was observed in these states.

Related news: Over 16 lakh migrants returned home, lakhs more look to go back

Bihar had reported 1179 cases, Odisha reported 737 cases, Uttar Pradesh had 4258 cases while Madhya Pradesh had 4789 cases on May 17. All of these cases are not due to the migrant movement, but a substantial rise could be observed after it began.

Deaths and recovery

India reported 2,872 deaths on May 17, with the death rate remaining constant between 3 to 3.4 per cent for the past five weeks. Currently, it stands at 3.2 per cent.

The country saw 194 deaths in a day on May 5 which was highest in a single day. But the daily deaths are still beyond 100 each day which is a bad sign.

Meanwhile, the increase in the recovery rate that stands at 37.5 per cent is a good sign for India. It means more than one-third of the patients have been cured and discharged from the hospitals. The recovery rate has also seen constant progress for the past five weeks.