With 34,956 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, 17 July, India has now crossed the one-million mark, taking the tally to 1,003,832. Meanwhile, the death toll increased by 687 to 25,602. This also marks the biggest single-day spike in the number of cases yet.
According to the data released by the Union Health Ministry on Friday morning, India currently has 3,42,473 active cases, while 6,35,756 patients have been cured or discharged, and one has migrated.
India had recorded its first COVID-19 cases on 30 January. It took almost five-and-half months for the country to cross the one-million mark.
Maharashtra is the worst-affected state, having recorded 2,84,281 cases so far, followed by Tamil Nadu and Delhi with 1,56,369 and 1,18,645 infections respectively. While the daily case rise has become stable in a city like Delhi, states such as Karnataka, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh have seen a steep rise in the number of infections in the past few days.
As per data by the Johns Hopkins University, India's case fatality rate (CFR) is 2.6 percent as of Thursday, which essentially means that out of the total confirmed positive cases, 2.6 percent of people have lost their lives due to novel coronavirus.
Further, while India is the third most-affected country in the world after the US and Brazil, India's CFR is lower than that of China, UK, France, etc.
According to the data, deaths per lakh population in India stood at 1.84 as of Thursday.
How Many Days to Reach One Million?
On 19 May, India had crossed one lakh mark in coronavirus-related cases, followed by 2 lakh cases on 3 June, 3 lakh on 13 June, 4 lakh on 21 June, 5 lakh on 27 June, 6 lakh on 2 July, 7 lakh on 7 July, 8 lakh on 11 July, 9 lakh on 14 July, and now 10 lakh on 17 July.
The number of days taken to record one lakh new cases has progressively declined, indicating that the outbreak is still spreading rapidly in the country.
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