NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India reported 40,953 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, the largest daily jump in nearly four months, with its richest state and Maharashtra economic backbone responsible for more than half of the infections.
The death rate rose by 188 to 159,404, the Health Ministry reported, underscoring a resurgence of the virus in the third most affected country in the world, after the United States and Brazil.
Some regions in India have already reintroduced containment measures, including restaurant lockdowns and closures, and more are under consideration.
Doctors have blamed the new wave of infection for people’s relaxed attitudes toward wearing masks and other social distance measures, warning that hospital wards are quickly filling up in states like Maharashtra.
Maharashtra reported a record 25,681 cases in the past 24 hours, including 3,000 in the financial capital of Mumbai.
The state of 112 million people has imposed a lockdown in some districts and curbed cinemas, hotels and restaurants until the end of the month. According to local media, Prime Minister Uddhav Thackeray warned that a wider lockdown is an option.
The rise in COVID-19 cases in India peaked at nearly 100,000 per day in September and declined steadily until the end of last month.
In addition to Maharashtra, the Indian states of Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh all reported an increase in the number of new cases.
The capital, New Delhi, has reported a steady increase in infections over the past two weeks, prompting city authorities to scale up their vaccination program to 125,000 doses per day, from around 40,000.
Many Indians are beginning to question the widely publicized campaign for vaccine exports, when only a fraction of the country’s 1.35 billion people have been vaccinated.
The government has announced plans to inoculate 300 million people or one fifth of the population by August. Yet only 42 million have been vaccinated so far, while the world’s largest vaccine producer has donated or exported nearly 60 million doses.
Reporting by Aditi Shah; edited by Jane Wardell