India Reports Lowest Daily Covid-19 Deaths Since Aug 3

A healthcare worker announces to people to get their rapid antigen tests done during a door-to-door survey for the coronavirus disease in Jakhan village of Gujarat on September 22, 2020

India reported its smallest daily rise in coronavirus deaths since Aug. 3 of 776, data from the Health Ministry showed on Tuesday, as global fatalities crossed 1 million and infections surged in several countries.

The South Asian country’s coronavirus case tally rose to 6.15 million after it reported 70,589 new infections in the last 24 hours, according to Health Ministry data, while total deaths stood at 96,318.

Though India’s death toll is a relatively low 1.6% of total cases, the country, along with the United States and Brazil, accounts for nearly 45% of global COVID-19 fatalities.

Meanwhile, the global death toll from COVID-19 rose past 1 million on Tuesday, a bleak milestone in a pandemic that has devastated the global economy, overloaded health systems and changed the way people live.

The number of deaths from the novel coronavirus this year is now double the number of people who die annually from malaria – and the death rate has increased in recent weeks as infections surge in several countries.

“Our world has reached an agonizing milestone,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

“It’s a mind-numbing figure. Yet we must never lose sight of each and every individual life. They were fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues.”

It took just three months for COVID-19 deaths to double from half a million, an accelerating rate of fatalities since the first death was recorded in China in early January.

More than 5,400 people are dying around the world every 24 hours, overwhelming funeral businesses and cemeteries.

That equates to about 226 people an hour, or one person every 16 seconds. In the time it takes to watch a 90-minute soccer match, 340 people die on average.