NEW DELHI: It took 110 days for coronavirus infections in the country to reach one lakh, while just 39 days more to go past the five lakh-mark.
Medical experts have pointed to the ramped up COVID-19 testing, now available more extensively and at a reasonable price, as a big reason for the spike in cases recently.
Six days after recording four lakh infections, India’s COVID-19 tally went past the five lakh-mark on Saturday with the highest single-day surge of 18,552 cases, while the death toll climbed to 15,685, according to the Union health ministry data.
It took 64 days for COVID-19 cases in India to touch the (May 19) one lakh-mark from 100 cases, and another fortnight to cross two lakh cases on June 3. It took 10 days for the tally to touch the three lakh-mark and another eight days for the cases to climb to four lakh.
Dr Monica Mahajan, Director, Internal Medicine, Max Healthcare, said it is important to understand the reason for the exponential rise in cases.
The numbers are doubling at such a fast rate due to factors such as the high reproduction number of the virus (the number of cases, on average, an infected person will cause during their infectious period), she said.
Also, with the lifting of lockdown norms people’s behaviour has changed again as they are not acting as responsibly as before in terms of social distancing, and testing has become more liberal, Mahajan told PTI.
She said the price of the test has come down and test kits are more easily available, so more cases are being detected.
Noted city-based lung surgeon Dr Arvind Kumar said definitely a big reason for cases going up is increased testing.
India is the fourth worst-hit nation by the pandemic after the US, Brazil and Russia. (PTI)
