Epidemiology of COVID-19 scenario in India

Abstract

There was an outbreak of a new Coronavirus infection in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in late December 2019, which caused acute respiratory syndrome of unknown etiology. The World Health Organization (WHO) named the viral causal agent as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) or COVID-19, and declared this infection as a pandemic on the 11 th of March, 2020. The first case of COVID-19 infection in India was reported on late January, 2020, and since then the numbers of confirmed cases have been increasing; thus the government had announced total lockdown of all activities. Most people infected with the COVID-19 virus experience mild to moderate respiratory illness, and recover without the need for special treatments. The elderly people and those with medical problems such as; cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease and cancer; are more likely to develop severe illness. Globally, corona virus cases rose to more than 500,000 for the first time on the 27 th of October, 2020. Within two weeks and since 30 th of October, 2020, COVID-19 cases had risen by almost 25 %, and about 400,000 daily cases were reported worldwide. The United States (US) was leading the global corona virus crisis with 8.9 million recorded infections and nearly 228,000 deaths worldwide. Asia had surpassed 10 million infections of the new corona virus on the 31 of October, 2020, and India reported an average of 48,000 cases daily with a total of 8 million cases. The aim of this review was to explore the epidemiological prevalence of COVID-19 in India along with age and gender stratified prevalence of this viral infection.