India’s coronavirus cases pass one million while UN raises $10.3 billion Covid-19 appeal

India added a record number of coronavirus cases – nearly 35,000 – in the last 24 hours, breaching the one million mark.

Among the only three countries so far to record more than a million coronavirus cases, India has the world’s third-largest case load, after the United States and Brazil.

The country’s active cases account for about a third of its total tally as it has been reporting a high recovery rate and a low death rate from the highly infectious coronavirus.

Surpassing Russia earlier this month to occupy the third spot for the highest number of coronavirus cases globally, India’s  number of cases has been on the rise – with nearly record daily surges – in recent weeks.

For Delhi, June had been a terrible month – with record surges almost every day. The city accounted for most of the case load in the capital territory up to that point. But by the end of the month, Delhi responded with several measures, from door-to-door health check-ups to increased testing, with the use of antigen tests.

This week the city has registered 1,200 to 1,600 new cases a day – about half of its daily count in the last week of June, when it was reporting more than 3,000 new cases a day.

While Delhi has since seen a dip in cases, Maharashtra is the biggest hotspot with the highest case count- more than 280,000 – among all the states.

Potential new hotspots are emerging as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal record a rapid rise in daily case numbers.

Meanwhile, the UN is making an appeal for $10.3 billion (£8.2 billion) to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, its largest ever fundraising call.

The global agency says up to 265 million people could face starvation by the end of 2020 because of the impact of Covid-19.

The funds will be for used for low income and fragile countries.

The United Nations warned that failure to act could undo decades of development. The agency had initially asked for $2 billion in its first coronavirus appeal in March.

In a positive development, 75 nations have put forward expressions of interest to protect their citizens and those of other nations through joining the COVAX Facility, a mechanism designed to guarantee quick, fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide.