India registers 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, almost 6.5 million infections

India’s death toll from COVID-19 passed the 100, 000 mark on Saturday, becoming only the third country in the world to reach that tally, after the United States and Brazil. 

Total deaths reported by the health ministry on Saturday was 100,842, while the number of infections climbed by 79,476 over the past 24 hours to 6.47 million. 

While the country continues to reopen, after a tough lockdown in March, experts have warned the number of cases could spike during the upcoming holiday season, including the Hindu festival of Diwali next month. 

“We have seen some recent slowdown of the virus curve but this may be a local peak, there may be another coming,” Reuters quoted Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, as saying.

She said data showed a little over seven percent of the population of 1.3 billion had been exposed to the virus, meaning India was still far from any sort of herd immunity.

The number of cases could rise to 12.2 million by the end of the year but the rate of spread would depend on how effective measures such as social distancing were, she said.

“So it will continue like a slow burning coil, that is my hope, and we have to play the long game to stop it from being a wildfire.”