Has India’s second Covid wave peaked?

While the Indian variant continues to dominate the headlines, India itself seems to have dropped out of the news a bit. What is going on there? 

It was reported yesterday that India notched up a record number of Covid deaths on Tuesday – 4525 – which indeed was the record of any country during the pandemic. However, that number needs to be put in the context of the country’s population of 1.3 billion. Grim as it is, it works out at 3.5 deaths per million. This is a fraction of the 27.6 deaths per million recorded in Britain on 20 January 2021.

Tuesday’s figure is also likely to be the high tide mark in India’s second wave of Covid. New infections in India have now been falling for a fortnight. They peaked at 412,618 on 5 May.