India’s COVID-19 deaths surpass 100,000
India was always going to struggle with COVID-19 because of its almost non-existent health infrastructure given its negligible per capita spending on health care in the last 70 years. On Friday, 2nd October, India’s COVID-19 deaths reached a grim milestone with the number crossing 100,000.
Behind only the US (212, 000 plus) and Brazil (144,000 plus), India’s horrifying number (100, 896) was reached on the day India remembers it revered leaders Late Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri (2nd October 1904) and Late Shri Mahatama Gandhi (2nd October 1869). India is now in the top three countries in the world where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19.
The only positive thing in this entire gloomy scenario is that India’s case fatality rate (CFR) – the proportion of deaths to the number of positive and confirmed COVID-19 cases – is at 1.56%, while the global average is 2.98% – almost the double of that of India’s. The same rate for the US stands at 2.84% and for Brazil it is 2.99%.
India’s infections numbers are fast catching up with that of the US. The number of infections in the US is 7.4 million plus while India has already racked up more than 6.4 million in infection numbers, leaving Brazil behind where the same number stands at 4.8 million.
The number of daily deaths due to COVID-19 in India has also been consistently over 1000 since the first week of September, way above in any other While the US clocked up 755 COVID-19 deaths daily and Brazil’s number sat at 713, India was recording daily average of 1,065 people dying of COVID-19 every day over the past week.
India’s death toll is expected to keep rising as the country is still adding 80, 000 plus new cases a day. With the given CFR rate, India will be facing around 1248 deaths in daily averages at 1.56%.
Government experts claim India’s better Covid-19 mortality rate (CFR) reflect India’s experience in dealing with other lung diseases such as tuberculosis, vaccination practices, early interventions in terms of the nationwide lockdown and perhaps above all, the country’s relatively younger population which is proving to cope better once infected.
Some other experts attribute India’s better CFR to the fact that the outbreak in India started relatively later than it did in the western world, thereby providing Indian scientists and doctors better insights to fight and treat it better.