India's Weekly Covid Cases Up 60% To 80k, Deaths Low But Rising

Toll 93, Higher Than Total Of Last 2 Weeks

- Amit Bhattacharya

Fresh Covid-19 cases in India in the week ending June 19 surged to the highest in nearly four months with close to 80,000 new infections, up 62% from the previous week's tally, reports Amit Bhattacharya.

Although deaths from the virus remained very low compared to previous outbreaks, at least 93 fatalities were reported in the country during the week, more than the combined toll in the previous two weeks (45 and 41).

Highest surge in Covid cases last week since Feb

New Delhi: India logged more than 79,250 new cases in the June 13-19 week, up from 48,769 in the previous seven days. This was the highest weekly total since February 21-27, when over 86,000 cases were detected. Covid cases have been increasing over the past four weeks but the last two weeks have seen an accelerated surge.

Insacog (Indian SARSCoV-2 Genomics Consortium) officials were quoted by agencies as saying that Omicron sub-lineages, mainly BA.2 and BA.2.38, and BA.4 and BA.5 in some parts of the country, were behind the current spike.