India reached the grim landmark after witnessing a steep surge in fatalities during its catastrophic second wave of the pandemic over the last two months.
Yet, these are still just the official figures as certain reports suggest that the unofficial toll could be up to 3 times higher.
Here’s how India went from its first Covid death in March 2020 to over 3 lakh …
As per data from worldometers.info as on 8pm, India has recorded 3,00,312 Covid deaths which is nearly half the US toll of over 6 lakh.
Brazil, which is the third worst hit country in terms of cases, has a higher death toll than India’s at over 4.48 lakh.
Besides these three, there are only five other countries in the world with death toll in six figures: Mexico (2.21 lakh), UK (1.27 lakh), Italy (1.25 lakh), Russia (1.18 lakh) and France (1.08 lakh).
Low fatality rate
Despite being the second worst-hit nation in the world with over 2.26 crore total infections, India’s fatality rate is among the lowest when compared to other hard-hit countries.
Currently, India’s fatality rate stands at 1.12%. This roughly translates to 1 death per 100 cases.
Italy, by comparison, has a fatality rate of nearly 3%. Even the US’ fatality rate is higher at almost 1.8%.
However, this is based on the official toll figure. The actual fatality rate could be different based on how the countries have been reporting their deaths.
Second wave fueled surge
India’s spiraling fatality count was fueled largely by its devastating second wave.
Even during the first wave, India’s fatalities remained much lower compared to this year.
In the month of September last year when cases peaked to nearly 97,000 a day, India had reported just over 33,000 deaths.
Compared to that, India recorded nearly 49,000 deaths in April and over 87,000 in May this year.
With still a week left and going by the current trends, May’s figures may well cross the 1 lakh mark.
This is a stark contrast from the situation just two months ago. In February, India had reported just 2,765 deaths during the entire month.
Overall, it took India just 27 days to add its last 1 lakh deaths. This is way less than the 208 days the country took to go from 1 lakh to 2 lakh fatalities.
Factors like lack of oxygen, ICU beds and black fungus infections have also contributed to the rising Covid deaths during the second wave.
Maharashtra leads death count
Maharashtra is India’s worst-hit state both in terms of cases as well as deaths.
With over 87,000 casualties, the state accounts for nearly 29% of the country’s deaths.
In fact, the toll in Maharashtra is almost 3.5 times that of Karnataka – which has the second highest number of deaths.
Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh have all reported over 10,000 deaths.