Could India Overtake U.S. With World's Most COVID-19 Cases By Next Month?

In recent weeks, COVID-19 has reserved its greatest havoc for India. Yesterday, India recorded more than 400,000 new COVID-19 cases. It won't be long before India crosses the 20 million case mark. According to Johns Hopkins University, India has 19,557,457 COVID-19 cases while the U.S. currently has 32,418,583 cases.

When India surpassed Brazil for the second in the world for the most COVID-19 cases in September 2020 the possibility of overtaking the U.S. for the most cases was raised. But the U.S. would have its own third wave from November 2020 to January 2021. However, community spread in the U.S. has receded considerably while COVID in India began to surge in March and accelerated in April. The surge has been attributed to the population not observing masking and social distancing with mass gatherings for malls, sporting events, religious ceremonies and political rallies for various state legislative elections. Vaccine dissemination has also proven inefficient.

Today, the United States recorded 45,303 new COVID-19 cases. If India continues to record 400,000 new cases a day and if the U.S. continues to record 45,000 new cases a day then India could overtake the U.S. in 37 days from now. That would be June 8, 2021.

Of course, it is possible that community spread in India could plateau while we see yet more increases in the U.S. But it would seem that India will supplant the U.S. when it comes to COVID cases sooner rather than later.