The growth in the Covid-19 pandemic in India is now at the fastest in the world, increasing 20% over the last week to more than 1.4 million confirmed cases, according to Bloomberg’s Coronavirus Tracker reported in the hindustantimes.com Jul 27.

The report noted that India and Brazil, the countries with the third and second highest numbers of infections, have some of the world’s lowest testing rates, with 11.8 tests and 11.93 tests per 1,000 people respectively, compared to the US, having the world’s highest number of infections, with 152.98 tests per 1,000, and Russia, having the world’s fourth highest number of infections, with 184.34 tests per 1,000..

High testing rate is seen as the first step towards taking effective measures to control the pandemic’s spread.

Meanwhile the tally of India’s Ministry of Health shows that there were a record 49,931 new cases and 708 new deaths in the country during the past 24 hours as of Jul 27 at 8AM, taking their totals to 1,435,453 cases and 32771 deaths.

A total of 917,568, or 63.91%, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 485,114.

This is the fifth consecutive day the number of cases increased by more than 45,000.

India is now adding nearly 100,000 every two days to its Covid-19 tally.

The daily number of new cases, at 49,931, was more than the daily number of those who recovered at 31,991.

And the gap between active and recovered cases has widened to 432,453 now, reported hindustantimes.com Jul 27.

Besides being the country with the third highest total number of infections, standing behind the USA and Brazil, and India has logged the sixth highest number of deaths after the USA, Brazil, the UK, Mexico, and Italy.