India caseload surges as experts warn of coronavirus going airborne

India has became the country with the third-highest coronavirus caseload in the world after the US and Brazil.

A disabled man tricycles past a COVID-19 centre in Mumbai on Monday. Picture: AFP

India has became the country with the third-highest coronavirus caseload in the world after the US and Brazil, as a group of scientists said there was now overwhelming evidence the disease can be airborne — and for far longer than originally thought.

The US’s top infectious diseases expert said the US was still “knee-deep” in its first wave of coronavirus infections and must act immediately to tackle the recent surge.

Anthony Fauci said the number of cases had never reached a satisfactory baseline before the resurgence, which officials have warned risks overwhelming hospitals in the country’s south and west. “It’s a serious situation that we have to address immediately,” Dr Fauci said in a web interview with National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins.

But Dr Fauci added he did not strictly consider the ongoing rise in cases a “wave”.

“It was a surge or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline,” he said.

“If you look at the graphs from Europe, the European Union as an entity, it went up and then came down to the baseline. Now they’re having little blips, as you might expect, as they try to reopen. We went up, never came down to baseline, and now we’re surging back up.”

The death toll from the virus in the US hit 130,000 on Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, and the number of infections is nearing three million.

Beijing on Tuesday reported zero new coronavirus cases for the first time since the emergence of a cluster in the Chinese capital in June that prompted fears of a domestic second wave.

A total of 335 people have been infected since a cluster emerged at the city’s massive Xinfadi wholesale market in early June.

Beijing’s health commission said on Tuesday it detected only one asymptomatic case the previous day, which China does not include in its confirmed cases counts.

The Beijing government has tested more than 11 million people for COVID-19 since June 11 — roughly half the city’s population.

Despite signs of progress in parts of Europe — where the Louvre museum in Paris reopened on Monday — total global infections surged past 11.5 million, with more than 536,000 deaths, since the pandemic first emerged in China late last year.

The Indian government, like many around the world, has gradually lifted virus restrictions to help the battered economy, but the number of cases has continued to climb, with 24,000 reported in 24 hours to take the total to nearly 700,000 on Monday, slightly more than Russia.

India’s major cities including New Delhi and Mumbai are suffering the most, and critics say not enough tests are being conducted — meaning that many COVID-19 infections are likely to go undiagnosed. The surge has forced authorities in India to convert hotels, wedding halls, a spiritual centre and even railway coaches to help provide care to coronavirus patients.

Around the world, governments are struggling to balance the need to reopen economies wrecked by weeks of lockdown measures against the risk of new infections as people return to normal life.

Amid the reopenings came a stern warning from experts who said governments must recognise that coronavirus can spread through the air far beyond the 2m urged in social-distancing guidelines. “There is significant potential for inhalation exposure to viruses in microscopic respiratory droplets at short to medium distances (up to several metres, or room scale),” wrote 239 scientists in the Oxford academic journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases.

They recommended new measures including installing high-grade air filters and preventing overcrowding in buildings and transport systems.

“Handwashing and social distancing are appropriate but, in our view, insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory microdroplets released into the air by infected people,” they said.

In South Africa, dozens of military medics were deployed on Sunday after a surge in infections in East Cape province.

Like India, South Africa imposed some of the strictest stay-at-home measures in late March in a bid to limit COVID-19’s spread, but infection numbers are rising daily as lockdown rules are gradually eased.

Iran on Monday announced 160 new deaths, just three shy of the country’s highest official one-day toll, registered the day before.

AFP