Coronavirus cases in India breached the two million mark on Thursday, according to figures released by the Ministry of Health. The last million cases were recorded in just 20 days, faster than the United States and Brazil which have higher numbers. India recorded its first coronavirus case on Jan. 30 and the caseload reached 1 million on July 16. India is now the third country to cross the two million mark. It reported 58,168 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number to 2,021,407. The country has reported around 40,700 deaths so far. While that is the world's fifth-highest total, experts say it is not very high given the country's population of 1.3 billion. The government, however, has been accused of undercounting coronavirus deaths due to a variety of reasons — from lags in reporting to rules on how India determines if a death was caused by the virus. Meanwhile, India has been steadily "unlocking" its economy since early June after a grueling lockdown that lasted nearly two months. Gyms and fitness centers are the latest to reopen. Testing has also gone up but it remains patchy as some states are doing as many as 40,000 tests per million, and others as few as 6,000. Case numbers are rising rapidly, for instance, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It shot up the list this past month and now accounts for India's third-highest caseload. Public health experts have said that given India's population size, there will be a large number of positive cases and preventive measures are the only option for now till a vaccine is available. Meanwhile, the total recoveries of coronavirus patients have jumped to 13,28,336 with 46,121 patients being discharged over the past 24 hours taking the recovery rate to 67.62 percent. With such a consistent increase in recoveries, the gap between recovered patients and active cases has reached 7,32,835, according to the country's health ministry. "The actual caseload of the country is the active cases (5,95,501) which is 30.31 percent of the total positive cases. They are under medical supervision either in hospitals or in-home isolation. The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) stands at 2.07 percent," said the health ministry, adding that the active cases as a percentage of total cases have seen a significant drop from 34.17 percent to 30.31 percent.
