India’s Covid-19 daily death toll crosses 1,000-mark for third time in 10 days

The daily death toll from the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India crossed the 1,000-mark for the third time in the last 10 days as the country reported 1,103 fatalities on Tuesday, highlighting the recent rise in the number of daily deaths in the country.

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Before Tuesday, daily deaths in the country have crossed the 1,000-mark four times – 2,004 fatalities were recorded on June 16, 1,130 on July 22, 1,018 on August 9 and 1,010 on August 13. In the first instance (June 16), the cause of the spike in daily deaths was Delhi and Maharashtra reporting a reconciliation of deaths. On July 22, the death reconciliation panel in Chennai corrected a discrepancy in the city’s Covid-19 numbers by adding 444 deaths to the toll.

This means that all actual instances of the daily deaths touching four-digits (if we exclude days when backdated deaths were added to the tally) have been reported over the past 10 days. This also means that Tuesday’s deaths were the highest single-day deaths reported in the country if we exclude reconciled deaths.

The total cases in the country went up to 2,763,712 as of Tuesday night. Among these, 53,010 people have died, while 2,034,828 patients have recovered and been discharged. At present, there are 675,874 active cases in the country.

India has the third-highest number of infections in the world after the US (5.6 million cases and over 175,000 deaths) and Brazil (3.4 million cases and over 110,000 deaths). However, India’s case fatality ratio – the proportion of Covid-19 patients who have died of the disease – is far lower than the other two nations. Around 1.9% of the Covid patients in India have succumbed to the disease, compared to 3.1% in the US and 3.2% in Brazil. Globally, there have been over 21 million cases of the disease and 773,152 deaths – taking the global CFR to 3.5%.