Coronavirus outbreak: India records nearly 12,000 death within 100 days

New Delhi, June 17: Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that India exceeded the 10,000-mark after nearly 100 days since the first fatality was recorded in the country in March. On Tuesday, 2,004 deaths were added.

The country's case fatality rate (CFR), which is defined as the proportion of death to the total number of cases, rose from 2.9 per cent to 3.4 per cent.

According to reports, the death toll in India surged beyond the 10,000-mark after Delhi and Maharashtra took into account hundreds of fatalities that were pending review. Their toll went by 437 and 1,409 respectively.

Maharashtra recorded 81 cases through the day to take its total death count to 5,537. The state has had 113,445 cases of COVID-19 and the new death numbers take its CFR to 4.9 per cent from 3.7 a day earlier.

Delhi also recorded 93 deaths, the highest number of deaths in a 24-hour period. The national capital now has recorded 44,688 infections in all and 1,837 of the patients have succumbed to the disease.

It is reportedly said that the jump in numbers was due to the death committee's efforts over the last four days to go through all previous emails and add the deaths.

As of Tuesday, 83 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in the country have been reported from the five worst-hit states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The 10 worst-affected states account for more than 96 per cent of all deaths reported in India.

The first 5,000 fatalities took 80 days, the latest 5,000 deaths came in just 17 days, with more than 2,500 being reported in the last week.