On Sunday, India reported the highest number of fresh coronavirus cases amongst all countries for the first time. India’s count of 53,641 COVID-19 cases was higher than the cases detected in the US (49,038) and Brazil (24,801), the two countries who have the highest caseloads of the coronavirus, according to data from worldometers.

India had also reported the world’s 2^nd highest number of COVID-19 cases from Monday-to-Sunday week overtaking Brazil but was behind the US. India recorded 3, 69,588 cases in the last week (July 27-Aug 2), which is higher than Brazil’s count of 3, 13,776. The US recorded 4, 41,808 cases this week.

On Monday, new coronavirus cases reported in India dropped to 49,134 but deaths from the coronavirus rose to 814, which is the second-highest daily count after 848 fatalities that were recorded on Saturday.

The number of daily testing has been dipping as India had conducted a record of 6.4 lakh tests on Thursday. Although the number of tests on Friday was 5.25 lakh, it further dropped to 4.63 lakh on Saturday and on Sunday to 3.81 lakh, as per the covid19india.org website.

On Monday, Tamil Nadu recorded 5,609 new cases, the lowest tally since 21^st July. But the state’s COVID-19 count has been increasing even though the number of new cases are slowly reducing. 500 deaths are reported in the last five days, including 109 deaths on Monday, the first time the daily death toll reached three figures. The time for the number of deaths to double has reduced to 19 days from 24 days on 28^th July. The case fatality rate for the state is at 1.6% and is one of the lowest amongst high prevalence states.

Consequently, for the third day, Maharashtra’s discharges were more than its fresh addition of COVID-19 cases. On Monday, Maharashtra added 8,968 fresh cases, taking its total count to over 4.5 lakh and 10,221 patients were discharged, taking the total count of discharges in the state to 2, 87,030. The recovery rate of Maharashtra has reached 63.7%, which is very close to the national rate of 64%.

On Monday, the daily count of cases in Mumbai has dropped below 1,000 after five days of reporting 1,000-plus cases. Mumbai had reported 700 cases in a day, its lowest addition in 77 days, on 28^th July. After that day, daily findings increased to 1,000-plus again. 970 cases were reported on Monday.

Andhra Pradesh also reported 7,822 fresh COVID-19 cases on Monday, taking the total tally to 1, 66,586. The death toll reached 1,537 with 63 deaths and 5,780 people were discharged in the last 24 hours. Currently, there are 76,377 active cases, 88,672 recoveries and 1,537 deaths.

Telangana reported a sharp drop in cases, from 1,891 cases on Sunday to 983 cases on Monday with 11 deaths reported. Authorities said that the drop in new cases could be because of low testing. 19,202 samples were tested on Sunday and only 9,443 samples were tested on Monday.

An official from the state health department said that samples heaped up at certain laboratories due to shortage of staff due to festivals and weekends. Also, the number of people coming for testing has also dropped.

Karnataka also reported 4,752 fresh cases while 4,776 patients were cured and discharged. The total number of the infected cases have reached to 1, 39,571. The state reported 98 deaths, taking the total count to 2,594. Bengaluru recorded 27 of the total deaths. The state reported that the under-5,000 cases in the last 24 hours are due to the drop in the total number of tests to 27,989 tests, including 9,915 RT-PCR tests. In the past few days, the state had been conducting 33,000 to 36,000 tests a day.

Source : ET Health world