Mint Covid Tracker: Gujarat saw highest spike in new infections and deaths over the past week
3 min read 25 Apr 2020, 09:55 AM ISTMumbai, Ahmedabad, Thane, Pune, and Indore account for half of all new cases reported over the past two days
PremiumThe number of reported coronavirus cases in India rose 15 percent over the past two days to 23,452, data from the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) published last evening showed. This is a slower rate of increase as compared to the previous 48 hours, when the reported case count rose 16 percent to 20,471.
So far this week, the number of cases has gone up by 46 percent (between Sunday evening and Friday evening). This is a slightly slower rate of increase as compared to the previous five days when cases went up by 49 percent.
Although India’s coronavirus trajectory has tapered over the past couple of weeks, it continues to be steeper compared to Asian peers such as Japan, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
Singapore, which had a much flatter curve than most other countries earlier, has seen a renewed wave of new infections that has steepened its curve. Compared to Western nations where the virus has claimed more lives, the trajectories of most Asian countries, including India, have been flatter so far.
India’s case count is now roughly double what it was ten days ago. This is a much slower rate compared to early-April, when cases were doubling every four days. Deaths have also seen slower rise. India’s death toll from covid-19 as of last evening was 723, roughly double what it was eleven days ago. Still, at the current rate of compounded growth, the number of cases could rise to 30,000 by Tuesday.
At 5,307, Maharashtra leads in terms of the number of active cases, according to the health ministry update on Friday evening. Active cases exclude deaths and recoveries from the list of confirmed cases.
Gujarat has the second most number of active cases (2,254), followed by Rajasthan (1,707). At 1,566 active cases, Madhya Pradesh has the fourth-highest number of active cases, closely followed by Delhi (1,518). The top five states together account for 69 percent of the active cases nationally, and the top ten states account for 92 percent of all cases.
Nationally, the active case count was 17,915 as of yesterday evening. These are early days yet and the state-wise distribution could change in the coming days. Testing across states has been uneven and as testing gets ramped up, more cases could come to light in states where reported cases have been low so far.
_1587787914720.png "Source: MoHFW")
Over the past seven days, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Maharashtra have seen the highest spike in cases among top ten states with most cases. These three states account for 65 percent of all the new active cases in this period. Over the same period, fatalities have surged the most in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh. These three states account for 39 percent of all covid-related deaths over the past seven days.
So far, 442 districts have confirmed cases in the country. Over the past two days, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Thane, Pune and Indore districts have seen the biggest spike in confirmed cases nationally. These five districts account for 50 percent of new cases over this period, data compiled by howindialives.com shows. Other districts that have seen a sharp spike over the past two days include Kolkata, New Delhi, and Chennai.
_1587787949193.png "Source: National Disaster Management Authority, state health ministries, national/regional publications")
_1587788015138.png "Source: NDMA, state health ministries, National/regional publications")
So far, Mumbai (4,581 cases) has reported the most number of cases nationally among all districts, followed by Ahmedabad (1,821) in Gujarat. Pune (1,101) in Maharashtra, Indore (1,029) in Madhya Pradesh, and Jaipur (762) in Rajasthan are the other leading districts. These top five districts now account for 38 percent of confirmed cases in the country.
Thane (643) in Maharashtra, New Delhi (567), Hyderabad (492), Surat (462) in Gujarat and Chennai (457) are the other high-burden districts which figure in the list of top ten districts. The top ten districts account for 49 percent of the confirmed cases nationally.
Most of India’s hotspots so far have been urban affluent districts, with richer states hit harder than the rest.
The coronavirus case count has crossed 2.7 million globally. Several parts of the world, including India, continue to be under lockdown to contain the pandemic, even as the costs of the lockdown keep rising.
