Good Sign: Active Cases Below 3 Lakh In India First Time In 6 Months

New Delhi: With daily cases of fresh COVID-19 cases coming down to around 25,000 to 30,000, talk of the third wave has become less frequent in the past few weeks, though the ensuing festival season is a worry.

Monday brought yet another reason to be optimistic as after a gap of more than six months, the number of active cases of COVID-19 infections in India has gone down the 3-lakh mark — 2,94,497 to be precise.

To get an idea about how relevant this figure is, it may be pointed out that active coronavirus cases in the country had climbed to 37.45 lakh at the peak of the second wave in May. In other words, total active cases have come down by over 12 times in 4 months.

This number has been falling steadily since the middle of May, except for brief periods when Kerala reported an unusually high number of cases.

Significantly, Kerala accounts for about 55 per cent of current active cases — 1.63 lakh to be precise. Maharashtra is No. 2 with around 37,000 active cases. Two-thirds of India’s current cases, thus, are in these two states.

Like in the second half of February, just before the second wave set in, more than 20 states are currently reporting less than 100 cases every day, including 10 states with less than 10 new cases. Even then, nearly 60% of the cases were in Maharashtra and Kerala. The dominance of Kerala, though, has been greater this time.

The difference from then and now is that total number of active cases had fallen to around 1.35 lakh at that time. Also, the daily case count had dipped to 12,000-15,000.