India became the second worst-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic on Monday as urban metro trains partially resumed service in the capital New Delhi and other states as the government pushes to sustain a weakened economy.
The 90,802 cases added in the past 24 hours pushed India's total past Brazil with 4.2 million cases. India is now only behind the United States, which has more than 6 million.
India's health ministry on Monday also reported 1,016 deaths, taking the overall tally to 71,642, although experts have suggested that fatalities from the virus are not being properly reported and the real figure could be much higher.
The Asian country has been recording the world's largest daily coronavirus caseload for almost a month even as the government pushes to open businesses to revive a contracting economy.
Medical experts said the country was in the middle of a second wave of the pandemic in some parts of the country, and that case numbers had surged because of increased testing and the easing of restrictions on public movement.
Virologist Shahid Jameel, who heads the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance said the growth rate in infections was "quite alarming".
"Over the past two weeks, the... average has moved from about 65,000 cases per day to about 83,000 cases per day, that is about a 27 per cent increase over two weeks or about two percent per day," Mr Jameel told Agence France-Presse.
Last week, news organisations reported that country's caseload went from three to four million in just 13 days, faster than the US and Brazil.
The pandemic will not finish this year as the virus has spread from big cities to other parts of the country, Randeep Guleria, the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said in an interview with India Today TV.
The number of cases could continue to rise before the curve flattens out, he said.
The pandemic is now spreading through rural areas which have poor health facilities but is also resurging in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
But on Monday the metro, a rapid transit system that serves India’s sprawling capital New Delhi and adjoining areas – resumed operations after five months.
Safety precautions are in place to minimise the risk of transmission on the usually-crowded service. Only asymptomatic people were allowed to board the trains, with masks, social distancing and temperature checks mandatory.
“We are on our way. It’s been 169 days since we’ve seen you!” the Delhi Metro tweeted on its official Twitter account.
The capital’s metro train network is India’s largest rapid transport system. Before closing down in March, the packed trains carried an average of 2.6 million passengers daily.
Its reopening comes at a time when India has the fastest-growing coronavirus crisis in the world and the economy has shrunk faster than any other major nation's.
