The official death count in India, due to COVID-19 and the deadly second wave of the pandemic, has crossed the 3 lakh mark. With this count, India has become the 3rd country globally to cross this mark with just two other countries- the United States and Brazil.
The country has been reporting more than 2 lakh fresh cases daily over the last several weeks, causing the crisis of beds in the hospitals and long queues outside the burial grounds and crematoriums.
On May 23, 2021, India has reported 2,40,842 new COVID-19 cases and 3,741 deaths. With this, India’s overall case count has surged to 2,65,30,132.
As per the experts, the official countrywide COVID-19 figures are an undercount as those who have been dying outside the system are not being added to the official count. In rural areas, as well, the COVID-19 testing is either non-existent or extremely low despite the surge.
COVID-19 death counts in the US and Brazil:
As India crosses the 3-lakh mark of death counts due to Coronavirus, the country is now only behind Brazil and the United States as far as total death counts are concerned.
The US is the worst-affected country with 5,89,703 deaths from 33,105,188 COVID-19 cases. The country is followed by Brazil with 4,48,208 deaths from 16,047, 439 cases.
The novel Coronavirus, which hit the world in 2020, has killed at least 3,456,282 people globally since the outbreak in China in December 2019.
Who’s to blame?Even though the Central Government blames the mutant variants of the virus as well as the people’s carelessness about following the anti-Coronavirus rules leading to the unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases, the experts, however, believe that the mega-events such as assembly elections and Kumbh Mela worsened the already delicate situation. The heavy caseloads further triggered the acute shortages of hospital beds, medicines, and life-saving medical oxygen across the country leading to deaths because of disruptions in the oxygen supply. |
Third-wave unavoidable if vaccination is not accelerated:
The Principal Scientific Advisor to the Centre K Vijay Raghavan, earlier in May 2021, had stated that the third wave of the pandemic in India is unavoidable, given the higher levels of circulating virus.
Epidemiologists have also warned that a third wave is inevitable if the vaccination drive against the virus is not accelerated.
With the pressure rising on the State Governments to speed up the vaccination drive, many of them have complained of flagging the inoculation drives because of the dwindling supplies of COVID-19 vaccine doses.
The Central Government has promised that by the end of 2021, there will be enough vaccines for all.
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