India Emerges as the World's COVID-19 Hotspot

Drone footage of mass cremations in New Delhi sent chilling images around the world this weekend, as India continues to fight a losing battle against COVID-19. According to public figures tracked by Our World in Data, India reported more than 350,000 new cases on Sunday, accounting for almost half of the world’s total that day.

The country with more than a billion inhabitants has suffered an explosion of new infections over the past few weeks, seeing the seven-day average of new cases surge from 65,000 on April 1 to 322,000 on April 25. Typically trailing the case trend by a couple of weeks, the number of deaths has also started snowballing in recent days as the country’s health system is brought to its limits.

To make things worse, New Delhi’s hospitals are facing an oxygen shortage as the country’s capital alone currently registers 20,000+ new cases a day. With hundreds of people dying each day at the moment, the city’s crematoriums are overwhelmed, resulting in the shocking images of makeshift cremations that emerged over the weekend.

As the following chart shows, India has emerged as the global hotspot of the pandemic in recent weeks, accounting for almost 40 percent of new cases over the past seven days.