South Asian nation is reporting world’s highest daily infections, amid increased testing and easing of restrictions.
India is struggling to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, with its total number of cases having now surged past the three million mark.
It is the third-worst affected country hit by the virus after the United States and Brazil.
But, for the past three weeks, the South Asian nation has been reporting the world’s highest daily new infections.
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On Friday, the health ministry reported a record jump of 77,266 cases and 1,057 related deaths over the past 24 hours.
“India is at a precarious stage in the containment and management of the COVID-19 epidemic. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the country has been increasing undaunted,” Sanghmitra Sheel Acharya, a professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Al Jazeera.
What is leading to the record rise and why has India struggled to flatten the coronavirus curve?
Here are five things to know:
Mass rapid testing
Health authorities have ramped up testing across the country by nearly five-folds within two months.
More than 39 million cumulative tests have been conducted so far, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), with an average of 800,000 samples being taken on a daily basis.
In the capital, New Delhi, the chief minister said testing will be doubled from 20,000 to 40,000 tests a day within a week.
Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Southeast Asia office, said the increased surveillance was contributing to the surge in numbers.
“Over the last few weeks, testing has been rapidly scaled up across the country,” Singh told Al Jazeera.
Since June, several states have authorised the use of cheaper and less accurate rapid antigen testing kits.
This testing technique is faster than most standard PCR tests and many do not require a lab for processing or any specialised equipment or trained personnel.
But health experts have raised concern that the antigen tests – which screen for the viral proteins – can miss infections and lead to false negatives, contributing to the spread of the virus in hard-hit areas.
Source: Aljazeera
