Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 6.68mn mark

More than 6.68 million people have been reported infected with the new coronavirus globally, a tally shows.

The Reuters tally also showed that over 391,000 have died of COVID-19 as of 1500 GMT on Friday, following an outbreak that started in Wuhan, China, in early December.

The number of COVID-19 cases in India has been doubling every three weeks but the epidemic is not growing exponentially in the country and in the South Asia region, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

“In South Asia, not just in India, but in Bangladesh and… Pakistan and other countries of South Asia with large dense populations, the disease has not exploded, but there is always the risk of that happening,” Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergency expert, told a news conference.

Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, noting India has a population of 1.3 billion, said that the 200,000 reported cases “look big but for a country of this size it’s still modest.”

India will throw open shopping malls, restaurants, and places of worship that typically attract large crowds next week, officials said, even though coronavirus infections are rising at the fastest daily rate than at any time in the past three months.

Anxious to jump-start an economy crippled by COVID-19 and put millions of people back to work, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is dismantling its vast lockdown of the 1.3 billion population imposed in March.

Strict guidelines will accompany the loosening of restrictions on Monday, however.

Total coronavirus infections in India have reached 226,770, along with 6,348 deaths, the Health Ministry said on Friday.

MG