What is worrying about the current situation is that the nature of the infection’s curve changed a month ago. The 7-day average of new cases was declining at the rate of 6.7% per day on June 2.
India faced a severe second wave of Covid-19 infections starting February. The seven-day average of daily new infections rose 36 times between February 11 and May 9, which is when the second wave peaked. Daily new cases have since fallen sharply, but the latest statistics underline the need for caution. This is all the more important given the anecdotal accounts of Covid-inappropriate behavior from many places, especially tourist destinations.
New infections are not rising, but they also are not falling fast enough
The 7-day averages of daily and active Covid-19 cases continue their downward trend after having peaked on May 9, 2021. However, two months since the second wave’s peak, the infection’s trajectory in India has seen a worrying development. There has been a slowdown in the downward trend of cases and a slight increase in the positivity rate. Worse still, daily new cases have been increasing over the past few days, although it is premature to label this the beginning of the next wave without a clear increase in 7-day averages.
On June 24, the 7-day-average of daily and active cases in India was 53,123 and 683,544 respectively. Two weeks later, on July 7, these numbers were 42,547 and 486,415, the lowest since the peak of the second wave. This shows that we are still on the downward path of the second wave. To be sure, the latest numbers are much higher than the lowest number of daily new cases (10,988) and total active cases (138,837) seen after the peak of the first wave.
What is worrying about the current situation is that the nature of the infection’s curve changed a month ago. The 7-day average of new cases was declining at the rate of 6.7% per day on June 2. New cases are declining at a much slower rate now. The daily fall in a 7-day average of new cases was 0.96% on July 7. The rate of decline of active cases has similarly decreased from 5.23% on June 9 to 1.8% on July 7.
Get more stuff like this
Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
