With Covid-19 cases in India crossing the 3-lakh mark, data from Johns Hopkins University reveals that the nation has taken the longest to reach the figure among the top four worst-affected nations. India has taken 134 days to reach 3 lakh cases ever since the first infection was reported on January 30 - a medical student who had arrived in Kerala from the virus epicentre of China’s Wuhan. At present, India's tally stands at 3,00,519, including 8,872 deaths and 1.52 lakh recoveries. India is the fourth worst-hit nation by the Covid-19 pandemic after the US, Brazil and Russia. While the US was the fastest to reach the 3-lakh figure in 73 days, Brazil took 85 days and Russia 109 days. In the hindsight, the population of all the three nations combined is approximately half of India's. However, it must be noted that the US, Brazil and Russia have conducted more tests than India. India fares the worst among the top 10 affected countries when it comes to the average daily number of tests per 100,000 population. According to the JHU data, India’s all-time average daily tests has been 1 per 100,000 population. India is of late conducting about 1.5 lakh tests per day, up from 10,000-20,000 people until six weeks ago. As of Saturday, the US has reported more than 20 lakh confirmed cases, the tally for Brazil is over 8 lakh and for Russia more than 5 lakh. The data also reveals that India took 109 days to reach the one-lakh mark on May 18, but the 2-lakh mark was breached only about a fortnight later on June 2. It took just 10 days to cross the 3-lakh figure, with the country registering more than 8,000 cases daily during this period that marked the first phase of the Centre’s three-phase plan to uplift the lockdown. In contrast, it took 65 days for the US to reach the one-lakh mark and just five days to double to two lakh on April 1. In three days, the country surpassed the 3-lakh figure. In fact, for all the three ranges - when cases grew from 0-1 lakh, 1 lakh-2 lakh, 2 lakh-3 lakh - India took the longest as compared to the US, Brazil and Russia. Moreover, India took 17 days to double its cases to 3 lakh. The doubling time was 3.4 days when the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25. Seen in perspective, the doubling rate for the US (from 1.5 lakh to 3 lakh) was 5 days while Brazil took 12 days and Russia 14 days. Doubling rate, one of many metrics that modelling experts are using to assess the spread, helps one gauge how quickly the outbreak might grow. However, when seen from a case fatality rate (CFR) perspective, Russia's was the lowest at 0.95 per cent on May 19 when the country touched the 3-lakh cases mark. While India's present CFR is 2.95 per cent, that of the US and Brazil was 3.37 per cent and 6.48 per cent respectively when the nations recorded 3 lakh cases.
