Coronavirus latest: India deaths pass 100,000; Malaysia rules out new lockdown despite spike in cases

India has recorded 6.47 million cases and is on course to overtake the US as the country with the most infections in the coming weeks

Malaysia on Saturday reported 317 new infections, the highest daily rise since it began tracking the pandemic

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A medical worker collects a swab sample from a man for a coronavirus test. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:28pm, 3 Oct 2020Updated: 7:44pm, 3 Oct 2020

Deaths from the novel coronavirus in India passed 100,000 on Saturday, official data showed as the pandemic continued to rage across the world’s second most populous country.

A total of 100,842 people have now died, health ministry figures showed, giving India the third-highest death toll in the world behind the United States and Brazil.

In terms of infections, India has recorded 6.47 million cases and is on course to overtake the US as the country with the most infections in the coming weeks.

India’s population of 1.3 billion is, however, around four times larger than that of the United States, which has seen more than twice as many deaths, raising doubts about India’s official numbers.

“We do not know the reliability of death rates in India,” virologist T. Jacob John said.

“India does not have a public health surveillance system, documenting real-time all disease events and deaths,” he said.

Even though India is carrying out around 1 million tests per day, as a percentage of the population its testing rate is much lower than many other countries. The US, for example, has tested more than five times as many people as India proportionately.

That India’s real numbers might be much worse than the official data suggest is borne out by a string of studies measuring antibodies to the virus among the population.