April 11 (UPI) — India has hit a record high in new daily COVID-19 cases with new daily deaths hitting their highest point in more than five months.
The country reached a record high of 145,385 new daily cases on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.
Meanwhile, the 794 new daily deaths in India was the highest since October 18, Press Trust of India reported. The record is 1,283.
India’s total number of cases since the pandemic began has reached over 13.2 million with over 168,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins global tracker of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The country’s number of cases is the third highest of any county worldwide, trailing Brazil and the United States. India’s death toll is the fourth highest worldwide, trailing Mexico, Brazil and the United States.
India has administered over 98 million COVID-19 vaccines with 12.3 million fully vaccinated accounting for .91% of the country’s population, which is the second most in the world behind China.
Though the country has status as a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, vaccine rollout has been late and pushed back by setbacks, The New York Times reported.
Everyone over 45 in India is now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination, but half a dozens states have reported shortage of doses, the BBC reported, adding that the federal government denies “allegations” of vaccine scarcity.
Worldwide, more than 748 million doses of COVID-19 have been administered, enough doses to fully vaccinate about 5% of the world’s population, but countries with the highest incomes have been vaccinated 25 times faster than those with the lowest, according to Bloomberg’s COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker.
Gibraltar has the highest vaccination rate, with 98.4% of its population having received a first dose and 86.9% fully vaccinated. Israel has the second highest percent of its population fully vaccinated at 54.3%.
Worldwide, COVID-19 has infected over 134 million and killed over 2.9 million, the Hopkins tracker shows.
Cases and deaths have been increasing at a greater rate. Cases reported were 786,147 Friday, according to Worldometers.info, compared with 653,166 one week ago. The deaths’ increase was 13,317 and 10,518 seven days ago.
