Coronavirus latest: India passes 4 million cases; Melbourne anti-lockdown protest turns violent
- India has the world’s fastest growing number of Covid-19 infections, adding a million new cases in 13 days, while South Korea’s cases continue to drop
- Hundreds attended a protest against lockdown measures in Melbourne, as Australia’s Victoria state reported 11 more deaths
The 86,432 new cases took India to 4,023,179 infections, third behind the United States, which has more than 6.3 million, and just trailing Brazil on 4.1 million.
While the government has eased restrictions in a bid to revive the economy, India now has the world’s fastest growing number of cases at more than 80,000 a day and the highest daily death toll at more than 1,000. The country’s caseload has gone from 3 to 4 million in just 13 days, faster than the United States and Brazil.
The pandemic is now spreading through rural areas which have poor health facilities but is also resurging in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
Maharashtra state, which includes Mumbai, has been at the centre of the crisis in India since a nationwide lockdown was imposed in March. It still accounts for nearly a quarter of the new daily cases across the country of 1.3 billion.
Shamika Ravi, an economics professor and former government adviser who has closely followed pandemic trends in India, said that India is “nowhere close” to a peak and Maharashtra must become the “focus” of the campaign against the coronavirus.