Coronavirus death toll in India passes 100,000

India’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose past 100,000 on Saturday. It is only the third country in the world to reach that bleak milestone, after the United States and Brazil.

Total deaths rose to 100,842, the health ministry said. While the tally of infections climbed to 6.47 million after a daily increase in cases of 79,476. India now has the highest rate of daily increase in infections in the world.

India‘s government faced a collapsing economy after imposing a tough lockdown to try to stop the spread of the virus in late March. Now it is pushing ahead with a full opening of the country.

Cinemas were allowed to reopen at half capacity this week and authorities can decide to re-open schools from the middle of this month.

Bhramar Mukherjee said data showed that 1.3 billion people had been exposed to the virus which is 7 percent of India’s population. It means India was still far from any sort of recovery. The number of cases could rise to 12.2 million by the end of the year. The rate of spread would depend on how effective measures such as social distancing were, she said.

The United States, Brazil, and India together account for nearly 45 percent of all Covid-19 deaths globally. Death rates in India, however, have been significantly lower than in those other two countries. It raises questions about the accuracy of its data. Still, all the cases in India have not been reported.