Weekly Covid numbers hit new high but growth slows | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The surge in coronavirus cases as well as deaths continued over the past seven days, making it the deadliest week yet of the pandemic in India. However, in what appears to be a silver lining in the Covid-19 numbers, the growth rate of both new cases and deaths has slowed considerably in the past week.

Covid-19 cases grew by a little over 4.3 lakh during the week (August 10-16) at a rate of 5.9%, significantly lower than the 10.9% growth in the previous week (August 3-9), when nearly 4.1 lakh new cases were detected. The week before that, July 27-August 2, had seen a growth of 16% in new cases, as per data collated from state governments.
The drop in the growth rate comes in the face of a rise in testing. This week, over 52 lakh tests were done in India as compared with 43 lakh in the earlier week, as per data from covid19india.org.
More on Covid-19
The slowdown in growth is evident even in absolute numbers. New cases this week were just a little over 24,000 higher than the previous week. Last week’s numbers were 40,000 higher than the week before (July 27-Aug 2).