News Of Grief From India, 303,720 People Died Due To COVID-19

Illustration of extracting the graves of COVID-19 victims. (Wikimedia Commons/Behzad Alipour)

JAKARTA - Word of grief came from India, where 303,720 people died from COVID-19, becoming the latest dark milestone of the country's coronavirus pandemic.

India's Health Ministry announced on Monday that 4,454 people have reportedly died from COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll in the country to 303,720 since the pandemic began, Reuters reported Monday, May 24.

Meanwhile, daily cases of COVID-19 infection in the country increased by 222,315 people in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of COVID-19 infection cases in the country to 26.75 million cases.

This dark record occurs when the delivery of THE COVID-19 vaccine slows down, making it difficult for people to get vaccines and rare but fatal fungal infections also affect COVID-19 patients. A condition that worries doctors.

India's number of COVID-19 deaths is the third highest reported in the world, accounting for 8.6 percent of the nearly 34.7 million deaths from the coronavirus globally, although the actual number is expected to be much larger, euronews reported Monday, May 24.

The first known COVID-19 death in India occurred on March 12, 2020, in southern Karnataka State. It took seven months to reach the first 100,000 dead. The death toll reached 200,000 at the end of April. A further 100,000 deaths were recorded in just 27 days, after new infections hit dense cities and rural areas, and an overwhelmed health care system handled a surge in patients.

Average daily deaths and cases have declined slightly in recent weeks. The Indian government announced last Sunday it was conducting the highest number of COVID-19 tests, with more than 2.1 million samples tested in the previous 24 hours.

To be aware, despite being the world's largest vaccine producing country, India has only given full vaccination to more than 41.6 million people or about 3.8 percent of its nearly 1.4 population.