India has crossed the grim milestone of 400,000 deaths from the coronavirus, half of which died during the deadly second wave in the past few months that severely stained the healthcare system and crematoriums.
India is now the third-worst affected country with over 4 lakh case fatalities after the US and Brazil, with the former reporting 694,000 deaths and the latter 518,000 Covid deaths. Apart from these, Mexico is the only other country to have registered more than 2 lakh deaths.
There are ten countries where more than one lakh people have succumbed to Covid or related complications. While US, Brazil ,and India stands as top three in the list , Mexico and Peru follow with 2.3 lakh and 1.9 lakh deaths. The others with five figures death tolls are Russia, the UK, Italy, France, and Columbia.
India recorded 853 deaths in the past 24 hours as per Health Ministry data showed on Friday. That took it past the 4 lakh mark, with the last 1 lakh being added in just 39 days, according to PTI.
“Undercounting of deaths is something that has happened across states, mostly because of lags in the system, so that means we will never have a true idea of how many we have lost in this second wave”, said Rijo M John, a professor at the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi.
Meanwhile, India’s death per million population is by far the lowest in the world at 287. It’s 916 in Russia and between 1,000 and 2,000 for France, Mexico, the US, and the UK. Among these countries, the ratio is highest for Peru, which has seen 5,765 deaths for every million of its population. For Columbia, Italy, and Brazil, the other three countries that have seen over a lakh deaths so far, the deaths per million ratio is over 2,000 but less than 3,000. India’s case fatality rate (deaths per 100 infections) is 1.3, which again is the lowest among these countries.