India reports global daily record of new coronavirus cases

The country is set to pass Brazil on Monday for the number of cases

Member of the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) security staff wear mask and face shield to protect herself from the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic in Bangalore, India, 5 September, 2020Show more

India found more than 90,000 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, a global daily record, data from the federal health ministry showed.

There were 90,632 new cases in the 24 hours to Sunday, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, while the number of deaths rose by 1,065 to 70,626.

The country is set to overtake Brazil on Monday for total infections and will be behind only the United States, which has 6.4 million cases and nearly 193,000 deaths.

Coronavirus cases in India have reached 4.1 million and about 3.2 million affected people have been treated so far, the government data showed.

Medical experts said the country was seeing a second wave of the pandemic in some parts of the country, and that case numbers have surged because of increased testing and the easing of restrictions on public movement.

The government will partially restore metro train services in the capital New Delhi from Monday.

The pandemic will not finish this year as the virus has spread from big cities to other parts of the country, Randeep Guleria, the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said in an interview with India Today TV.

The number of cases could continue to rise before the curve flattens out, he said.

India has logged the world’s largest daily coronavirus caseload for almost a month even as its government pushes to open businesses to revive a contracting economy.

More than 1 million cases have been detected in India in less than two weeks. Authorities say India's daily testing exceeds 1 million now.

Dr. Randeep Guleria, a government health expert, said India is seeing a resurgence with over 70 per cent of its nearly 1.4 billion people still susceptible to infections. "We could say that we are seeing some sort of a second wave in certain parts of the country."

India's recovery rate was 77.23 per cent, leading to a decline in fatality rate to around 1.73 per cent, the ministry said.

With the economy contracting by a record 23.9 per cent in the April-June quarter, leaving millions jobless, the government is continuing to relax restrictions except in high-risk areas. It announced that subways will resume service on Monday after more than five months with restrictions on the number of people on board.