India sets COVID daily case world record

[Celerity]

India's health ministry confirmed 314,835 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, taking the total tally to nearly 16 million infections.

https://www.axios.com/india-sets-covid-daily-case-world-record-9ea992fe-7b49-43b7-bd77-cf4a2c5fca33.html



Why it matters: It's the highest number of coronavirus cases reported in a single day anywhere in the world, eclipsing the previous record of 300,669 cases set in the U.S. on Jan. 8. The health ministry said another 2,104 people lost their lives to the virus, taking the pandemic death toll to 184,657. Driving the news: West Bengal reported Thursday that a record 9,819 people had tested positive for the virus, as voters went to the polls in state elections, the Indian Express reports.

On Monday night, India's capital, New Delhi, entered a weeklong lockdown, as hospitals became overwhelmed, supplies like oxygen scarce and morgues overfull. In the city of Nashik, in the state of Maharashtra, 24 coronavirus patients died at a hospital Wednesday after "oxygen supply was disrupted" following "leakage in the main oxygen storage tank," per the Indian Express.

The government of Maharashtra announced fresh pandemic restrictions from 8p.m. Thursday local time through May 1, while authorities on the island of Goa announced a night curfew that will remain in place until April 30. For the record: More COVID-19 cases have been recorded globally each day than ever before in the pandemic, surpassing the previous global peak in early January. India is the biggest source of these new cases, per Axios' Dave Lawler.

Of note: Earlier this month, India became the second country after the U.S. to surpass 100,000 new coronavirus cases in one day. Case numbers have continued to surge since then. The country had until this month been exporting most of the coronavirus vaccine doses it was producing to countries like Saudi Arabia and the U.K., also contributing to the global COVAX initiative. But as cases began surging in India, officials began scrambling vaccinate as many people as possible — sharply curtailing exports, Lawler notes.

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