India passed the grim milestone of 8 million corona infections on Thursday. The second hardest-hit country in the world is gearing up for a second wave.
According to the latest figures from the Indian government, a total of 8,040,203 corona infections have been identified. In the country of about 1.3 billion inhabitants, 120,527 have been proven to have died from Covid-19.
The Indian death rate is in stark contrast to the most affected country in the world, the United States. According to the figures from Johns Hopkins University, 8,856,413 infections have been diagnosed there, but no fewer than 230,000 people died.
Although mortality in India appears to be relatively limited and the number of new infections has been declining in recent days, authorities are bracing for a second wave after Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights to be celebrated on November 14.
The capital New Delhi reported about 5,000 new infections on Wednesday, the highest number in one day since the corona pandemic also reached India. The authorities fear that the number of new infections per day in New Delhi in a second wave could quickly exceed 10,000.
Mumbai, the country’s financial centre, has been the hardest hit of all Indian cities. There, a total of more than a quarter of a million infections have been diagnosed, and more than 10,000 corona-related deaths have been recorded. In Mumbai, there are currently around 2,000 cases of the infection being added every day.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has warned his people in recent speeches that it is behaving “recklessly” by failing to abide by renunciation rules and other measures.