Second wave claims over 1 lakh lives | Economic Times

In 50-odd days, the second Covid wave has claimed over 1.3 lakh lives in India, shows a cumulative data analysis of all Covid deaths in the country so far since March 2020.Between April 1 –– when the second wave in India spiked recording significantly more deaths –– and May 22, the number of cumulative Covid deaths in India rose from 1.63 lakh to touch 3 lakh on Sunday.In contrast, the first wave had claimed one lakh lives in India but these were spread over 6.5 months –– between March 12, 2020 and October 2, 2020 –– when the first wave subsided.The death toll in the second surge has risen sharp and fast, shows information mapped from the John Hopkins University CSSE COVID 19 data, available on open source platform Ourworldindata.org.While daily deaths in India were at 112 on March 1, it rose to 349 by April 1. In 15 days, the figure trebled to 1,000 and to 3,000 plus by May 1. The daily death count was 4,188 on May 21. From a 3.3% weekly death rate growth on March 10, 2021, India touched a 55% weekly growth rate by April 1 and 92.5% by April 24.But from May, the curve has been declining. It is down to 4.9% weekly growth by May 21, indicating that the worst of the second wave is behind us.The high death count is related to the huge number of new infections in the second wave. By April 15, the case load in India was already more than double of the first wave peak value, points a recent study from IIT Kanpur. The IIT-K study by Rajesh Ranjan, Aryan Sharma and Mahendra K Verma terms as ‘baffling’, the “sudden surge in number of cases after a relatively long ‘cooling’ time –– a five-month hiatus between the two waves in India”.The second wave has behaved differently in different regions. While most nations reported high Covid cases in the second wave, mortality figures vary.A study by researchers from the University of Sydney and Tsinghua University said earlier this year that Northeastern US and Western Europe tended to have significantly lower mortality rates during the second wave, except Sweden and Germany.The US, with 5.8 lakh plus cumulative deaths so far, has seen sharp rises through its two big waves. From 2.7 lakh cumulative Covid deaths on December 1, 2020, the US numbers surged to 3.7 lakh by January 8 –– up by a lakh in five weeks.In the UK, it is estimated that over 57,818 deaths occurred in the first wave, while there were more than 89,000 deaths in the second wave. Brazil has seen cumulative deaths rise from 2.55 lakh on March 1 this year to 4.48 lakh as on May 21. Mexico revised its Covid 19 death toll figures by nearly 60% in late March.