6,000, 7,000, 8,000: How the final week of lockdown 4.0 saw spike in Covid-19 cases

India is the ninth worst-hit nation by the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of active Covid-19 cases stood to 89,995 while 86,983 people have recovered.

India on Sunday registered its highest single-day spike in the number of Covid-19 cases. According to the Union health ministry update at 8 am, the number of cases in the country rose by 8,380 in the last 24 hours (between Saturday and Sunday).

A view of an empty stretch of the Rajpath during the fourth phase of the Covid-19 lockdown, in New Delhi on Saturday. (Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo)

The death toll climbed to 5,164 after 193 fatalities in the last 24 hours, the health ministry data further showed.

The final week of the end of lockdown 4.0 has been the deadliest, with India registering record Covid-19 cases and fatalities. On May 24, the number of new cases were 6,767, it increased to 6,977 on May 25. The number dipped to 6,560 on May 28, but again rose to 7,466 the next day.

On May 30 (Saturday), India saw another big single-day spike with 7,965 new Covid-19 cases. And Sunday’s numbers showed the biggest single-day spike with more that 8,300 cases.

India is the ninth worst-hit nation by the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of active Covid-19 cases stood to 89,995 while 86,983 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, the Union health ministry said.

Delhi, which will decide on the lockdown extension on Sunday, has 18,549 infections, including 416 deaths and Gujarat with 16,343 Covid-19 patients has recorded more deaths than the national capital at 1,007.

However, India has a fatality rate of 2.8 per cent, which is much lower than the global six per cent. It has given experts hope that the outbreak in India may not be as deadly as it has been in many countries, perhaps highlighting some of the gains from the nationwide lockdown. Meanwhile, the recovery rate in India improved to 47 per cent on Saturday, up five percentage points from just a week ago.

The country’s top experts said keeping fatalities down by focussing on health care facilities will now be the most crucial strategy to deal with the pandemic across the country, where the outbreak has largely taken hold and a rise in the number of infections is inevitable.