India's coronavirus death toll passes 100,000
By Sanjay Jha, ITV News, Delhi
India has recorded more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths as the pandemic continues to sweep through the country.
The grim milestone comes as India reported another 1,069 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total toll to 100,842 in the world’s second-worst affected nation.
Despite the death toll, the country's fatality rate is significantly lower than the global average, according to India's Health Ministry.
The total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 has now crossed past 6.39 million, inching closer to crossing past USA, the world’s worst affected nation.
India, the world’s second most populous nation after China, reported its first case of Covid-19 nearly eight months ago, on January 30, and now accounts for about 10% of global coronavirus deaths.
The country's case fatality rate (CFR) – the proportion of death to the number of confirmed cases – stands at 1.56%, which is less than half of the global average (2.98%), but also better than the comparable rates in the US (2.84%) and Brazil (2.99%).
Despite this, India's daily death toll has still been exceeded every other country this week.
On average, 1,065 people have died every day over the past week, against 755 average daily deaths in the US and 713 in Brazil in the same period.
This has made India the biggest contributor to the global death tally — one in every five fatalities (19%) in the world in the past week has come from India.
India has crossed the 50,000 death mark only 30 days later on August 15. Deaths crossed the 75,000 mark another 25 days later on September 9, with the latest 25,000 fatalities coming in just 23 days.