COVID-19: Decline in Maharashtra’s viral load helps bring down India’s Coronavirus growth rate

In India, while a large number of new COVID-19 cases are being reported on a daily basis, their average dropped below 80,000 on Friday. This has happened for the fourth time in the last month. Friday’s count of new cases stood at 79,000, which according to a report by The Indian Express, is lowest since September 1. The report explained that the decline in the number of new Coronavirus cases is not the result of low tests (conducted the previous day) but due to relatively low number of new cases being reported from Maharashtra.

In the last few days, a decline in Coronavirus cases in Maharashtra (state accounting for highest COVID-19 cases in India) has been witnessed. For the last two weeks, the state has been recording a surge of 15,000 to 18,000 cases on a daily basis. Earlier, this number even crossed 22,000. The reduction in number of new cases has impacted the overall tally of Coronavirus cases in India, further pulling it down. Notably, in the second week of September, the national daily toll peaked with 98,000 cases. Apart from this, a decline in Coronavirus cases was also reported from Andhra Pradesh. The state was the second highest contributor of COVID-19 cases in India two weeks ago.

However, Maharashtra’s influence on the India numbers is still great. Earlier, the state accounted for at least 40 per cent of the entire caseload in the country. This percentage has now come down to less than 22 per cent now which is still a significant number. Therefore, India’s growth curve is still being majorly impacted by the number of cases that are reported in Maharashtra. The report highlighted that the case trajectories for Maharashtra and India closely resemble each other.

Meanwhile, the number of Coronavirus cases in the country has exceeded 64.73 lakh so far. While the active cases remain at 9.44 lakh, the death toll in the country has crossed the 1 lakh-mark. On Saturday, the total number of Coronavirus deaths reached 100,842, according to the data provided by the Health Ministry.