MUMBAI / NEW DELHI (Reuters) – COVID-19 deaths in India increased to more than 50,000 on Monday, five months after the country reported its first such death, as migrants returned to major cities in hopes of repainting after the decline of antivirus restrictions.
Hundreds of rural migrant workers who left the capital, New Delhi, en masse after wasting their jobs on a national shutdown in March, were returned to buses on Monday and had to wait in line for quick COVID-19 testing.
Those who tested positive were sent to quarantine centers, while the others were allowed to leave the city’s busy interstate bus terminal with their luggage. Almost everyone wore a mask or covered their noses and mouths with scarves or handkerchiefs, in the field such virus control measures have become difficult to implement and the infection rate has increased.
At the time, the world’s most populous country recorded 57,981 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 2.65 million, while 941 additional deaths led to the total number of deaths to 50,921.
India is only the third country, behind Brazil and the United States, to record more than 2 million infections, but it has a relatively low case fatality rate of 1.9%, compared to the world average of 3.5%.
India has conducted more than 730,000 tests for COVID-19 in more than 24 hours, according to the state-run Medical Research Council of India.
The government’s stated purpose is to conduct 1 million tests a day, even though experts, the rate remains too low for an expanding country of 1.3 billion people. Fears about India’s heavy reliance on immediate antigenic testing that have a maximum false negative rate are also developing.
India has been experiencing at least 50,000 new infections per day since July 30, as the disease has spread from primary cities such as Mumbai and Delhi to deficient inland areas in densely populated states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Reports through Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai with additional reports through Anuron Kumar Mitra in Bengaluru; Edited through Mark Heinrich
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