Asia

Home page

Asia

Indian data suggests runaway COVID infections as deaths hit daily record

19 May 2021 22:11 (UTC +04:00)

Nearly two-thirds of people tested in India have shown exposure to COVID-19, a chain of private laboratories said on Wednesday, indicating a runaway spread of the virus as the daily death toll rose to a record 4,529, APA reports quoting Reuters.

India reported 267,334 new daily infections on Wednesday, taking its tally to 25.5 million, the world's second highest after the United States, with a death toll of 283,248, health ministry data showed.

For months, nowhere has been hit harder than India by the pandemic, as a new variant discovered there fuelled a surge of up to more than 400,000 new infections a day.

Only the United States has had a worse single day death toll, when it lost 5,444 people on Feb. 12, a Reuters tracker shows.