Another record, over 115,000 new Covid cases in India in one day

India set yet another record for daily cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), with 115,320 new infections reported across the country on Tuesday – the second time in three days that the country has broken previous single-day case records, highlighting the dangerous rate at which the second wave is growing.

The previous record for daily cases (103,796) was set on Saturday when new infections in the country had crossed the 100,000 mark for the first time since the start of the outbreak.

A total of 630 new deaths were reported across India on Tuesday, taking the total number of fatalities due to the viral outbreak in the country to 166,229, according to HT’s Covid-19 dashboard.

The number of active cases in the country, meanwhile, also continued to surge as the recoveries failed to keep up with the huge surge in cases. As of Tuesday night, there are 843,754 active cases of Covid-19 in India.

After Tuesday's tally, the seven-day average of new cases across India is 93,041 – just shy of the record high of 93,617 on September 16, 2020, considered the peak of the first wave. At the current pace, the trajectory appears set to surpass the previous peak on Wednesday. India is currently the world’s biggest Covid-19 hot spot, having surpassed the rate of daily cases in the US and Brazil last week.

India’s second wave of Covid started around the third week of February, and since then, the alarming rate of new infections has forced several state government to reintroduce curbs on social movements. The rate at which cases have been rising, however, has been far more rapid than in the first wave.

Maharashtra, India’s hardest-hit state, continued to dominate daily statistics with 55,469 new infections on Tuesday. With 9,921 new cases on Tuesday, Chhattisgarh had the second-highest number of daily infections in the country. Both of these states have seen their seven-day averages (48,560 and 5,949, respectively) surpass the peak of the first wave.

Along with these two, three other states have so far surpassed their peaks from the first wave – Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. The seven-day average of daily infections in these states is 2,791, 2,970 and 2,895, respectively.