Covid-19 Pandemic: India and Russia Among the Most Affected Countries in the World

(Patria) – India on Friday became the third country in the world by the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus, immediately behind the US and Brazil, as the epidemic continues to spread rapidly across this populous country.

Experts claim that the figure of 1 million is relatively small considering the population of 1.3 billion, however, the total number of infected people is certainly significantly higher due to the presence of asymptomatic cases and a lack of testing.

The number of new infections has increased in the last few weeks, leading India to surpass Russia, which was in third place in terms of the number of infected people.

New quarantine measures are in effect for contamination zones in several Indian states, but their implementation is difficult as the local population is hard to force to stay at home.

On Friday alone, 35,000 new cases were confirmed, bringing the total number to over 1,005,000, and the number of deaths to 25,000.

Epidemiologists believe that India is still far from the peak of the epidemic.

Concerns are also growing about the local healthcare system with a long-standing deficit of staff, equipment, and hospital beds. 

Immediately behind India on the world 'corona list' is Russia with more than 12,000 deaths and close to 760,000. In that country, 186 people died in the last 24 hours alone, while the number of infected people increased by 6,406 new cases.

In Russia, nearly 540,000 people have recovered since the beginning of the pandemic.