India Tops Million COVID-19 Cases: A Comparison With the World

India became the third country in the world to cross a million cases, after the United States and Brazil.

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 so far.

With this, India became the third country in the world to cross a million cases after Brazil and the United States, which currently have 2,012,151 and 3,576,430 cases respectively, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

We look at where India stands in comparison to some of the hardest-hit countries in the world in terms of cases, deaths, testing and 'flattening' of the curve.

Time It Took to Cross a Million

The first case of COVID-19 in US was reported 175 days ago on 22 January 2020. By 29 April, the country had crossed 1 million - in three months - and then over 2 million more in just 2.5 months.

Brazil reported its first COVID-19 case on 26 February this year and crossed 1 million in four months by 20 June. It only took a month for it to cross another million on 17 July.

While it took about four months for India to register half a million cases, the number doubled in only less than three weeks. On 19 May, India had crossed the 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.

Deaths Per Million

According to a data analysis by Statista, India accounts for the lowest (after China) number of deaths per million of the population among the countries registering high COVID-19 cases. In descending order:

• 677.6 UK

• 579.12 Italy

• 419.46 US

• 388.16 Peru

• 383.68 Chile

• 359.79 Brazil

• 292.46 Mexico

• 163.94 Iran

• 81.35 Russia

• 18.42 India

However, India’s deaths continue to increase as the graph (below) shows. Moreover, the number of deaths adding daily is also on a rise, with record-breaking numbers being registered every day. The country recorded its highest spike of 34,956 Covid-19 cases and 687 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the tally to 10,03,832 cases with a death toll of 25,602 across the country due to the pandemic.

Countries Flattening Their Graphs

While European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and even the United Kingdom have been observed as flattening the curve, the case for the US and India (graph below) is the opposite.

The number of cases in India is rising at an exponential speed. While some experts have spoken about July being the peak, others have explained for a country the size of India, peak will happen at different times for different states.

While the rest of the world saw a fall in the number of cases by 2% as on 25 June, India and Brazil saw a rise in the number of cases by 4%. According to stats shared by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and Johns Hopkins University, India's rate of growth of COVID cases has been consistently higher in comparison to the US since 2nd week April. Since June, India's numbers grew faster than Russia.

If we look at the cases per million of the population in the most impacted countries, this is what we get:

• India: 727.41

• United States: 10804.21

• Brazil: 9466.3

• Russia: 5158.46

• UK: 4309.46

• Italy: 4031.24

• Peru: 10359.93

• Chile 16933.17

Again, India appears to be towards the lower end of the scale with just above 700 cases as compared to all other countries running in thousands. But does it have to do with testing?

Tests Per Thousand

India’s lower count of cases could be attributed, at least partially, to its abysmal testing as compared to the world. Even though India has tested a cumulative 1,30,72,718 samples, and 3,33,228 in the past 24 hours, it’s amongst the lowest when we consider the total population and compare tests per thousand against other countries. These are the numbers according to Our World in Data:

• India: 9.23

• US 128.46

• UK 110.61

• Russia 164.82

• Peru 9.23

• Italy 100.95

• Chile 69.18

• Mexico 5.25

• Brazil: NA

A general trend is that countries who are conducting more tests per population are also registering more cases, as can be seen in our numbers.

With a daily spike of over 30,000 cases, India’s graph is rising exponentially - while some states within the country are showing improvement. Even though India’s rate of recovery, which is currently at above 60%, is promising, expanded testing and ramping up health infrastructure to contain the number of deaths is the need of the hour.