India reported 4,041 new Covid infections today -- the highest single-day jump since March 11 -- stoking fears of another wave building up in some parts of the country that has eased almost all restrictions.
India has recorded 43.17 million Covid infections since the start of the pandemic and 524,651 casualties, according to health ministry data, although the World Health Organization(WHO) has said the number of deaths is significantly higher. The daily positivity rate, or the confirmed Covid cases as a percentage of overall tests, stands at 0.95% for India while the weekly positivity rate has begun inching up, the data show.
Maharashtra, which was also an early hotspot in previous virus waves in India, is again seeing a spike in Covid infections, with the positivity rate breaching 8% this week. The state's capital, Mumbai, saw a 231% surge in hospitalizations in May compared with the preceding month. While hospital admissions in May were just 215, the trajectory has alarmed state authorities. India's devastating delta-led wave last summer had pushed daily cases past 400,000, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.
The Centre has asked five states -- Maharashtra, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu -- to curb rising infections, according to June 3 letters dispatched by the health ministry to state governments. The ministry asked these states to "maintain a strict watch and take pre-emptive action" to control the spread of Covid.
Even as the world learns to live alongside Covid, its highly-transmissible variants such as omicron are still triggering new waves in places like China, New Zealand and Taiwan that had so far avoided the worst of the early pandemic. Chinese cities of Shanghai and Beijing continue to see cases despite hard containment measures while Hong Kong revived some of its toughest curbs as new variants flared up.
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