India passed the one million reported cases of Covid-19 on Friday. The third nation in the world in number of recorded contaminations, after the United States and Brazil, the Asian giant counted on Friday 25.602 deaths for 1.003.832 confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official figures published in the morning by the Ministry of Health. The world’s second-most populous nation has recorded nearly 35,000 cases and 700 additional deaths attributed to the virus in the last 24 hours, according to the official balance sheet.
The number of deaths from Covid-19 in India remains relatively low compared to the most affected countries, with 18 deaths per million people compared to 417 in the United States, the nation most bereaved by the pandemic, according to AFP calculations based on official data.
Danger for South Asia
At the initiative of regional governments, health reconfinements and restrictions to combat the disease have been increasing in recent weeks across the country of 1.3 billion people. The 125 million people in the poor northern state of Bihar reconfined themselves at midnight on Thursday, one day after the 13 million people in the southern city of Bangalore did the same.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had imposed a brutal lockdown in late March, which is lifted in early June, despite the soaring number of cases, in an attempt to revive an economy on its knees. However, many restrictions remain in place.
South Asia is poised to become the next epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) expressed concern this week. “While the world’s attention is focused on the ongoing crisis in the United States and South America, a similar human tragedy is rapidly emerging in South Asia,” said John Fleming, an IFRC regional officer, in a statement.
Source: 20minutes
Photo by Gajendra Bhati from Pexels
