India's coronavirus epidemic is the world's fastest growing

A healthcare worker takes a swab from a man to test for Covid-19 in Mumbai on July 24, 2020. PHOTO: REUTERS

NEW DELHI (BLOOMBERG) - India's coronavirus epidemic is now growing at the fastest in the world, increasing 20 per cent over the last week to more than 1.4 million confirmed cases, according to Bloomberg's Coronavirus Tracker.

Infections in the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people have reached 1.43 million, including 32,771 deaths, India's health ministry said, with daily cases close to a record 50,000 on Monday (July 27).

India is only trailing the US and Brazil now in the number of confirmed infections, but its growth in new cases is the fastest.

Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are among the states where the maximum number of daily cares are being reported.

The world's second-most populous country has been ramping up testing, with 515,472 samples taken on Sunday, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Still, India and Brazil have some of the world's lowest testing rates, with 11.8 tests and 11.93 tests per 1,000 people respectively, compared to the US with 152.98 tests per 1,000 and Russia with 184.34, according to Our World in Data, a project based at University of Oxford in the UK.

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