In fresh signs of a slowdown in the pandemic, India has begun to report more coronavirus recoveries each day than new patients. The trend began last Saturday and has lasted six days. This has helped India achieve its slowest weekly pace in the growth of active cases since the pandemic began: the number is now back below 1 million.

Most states reported a slower growth in active cases as well as deaths this week. Kerala remains a point of worry, though, as it added over 10,000 active cases within a week—by far the most among all states. Chhattisgarh, the hotspot for a few weeks, recorded a 12% rise in active cases, as compared to 41% last week. The state’s testing remains dismal.

Maharashtra, where the infections had again paced up recently, improved in the last seven days.

21 states now cross 500-death mark, but rise in toll slows down

Rise in death toll with time. Day 0 for each state refers to the day the 100th covid-19 death was recorded

However, such a trend need not always hold. A similar slowing trend in the whole of mid-August did not continue in early September. India now has 91,149 covid-related deaths as of Thursday morning, after a 10% weekly jump, latest data from the Union health ministry showed.Kerala and Uttarakhand crossed 500 deaths each, while Jammu and Kashmir became the 14th state to cross 1,000 deaths. Karnataka’s toll went past 8,000. Uttar Pradesh now has the fifth highest toll after it crossed Delhi.

As many as 21 states have more than 10,000 active cases now, but all except Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir have crossed the 70% mark in recovery rate, or the share of patients who have been discharged. About 61% of the patients in Chhattisgarh and 69% in Jammu and Kashmir have recovered. This shows most of these two states’ case-load has come in recent weeks.With a 30% weekly growth, Kerala reported the worst jump in active cases in the last seven days, followed by 24% in Jammu and Kashmir and 18% in Uttarakhand. All calculations are based on seven-day rolling averages, which minimize the effect of volatile and delayed reporting. Only states with more than 10,000 active cases were considered.The total number of active cases now stands at 966,382, while 4,674,987 patients have been discharged.

The five states with the most deaths—Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh—have a 68% share in the national death count. Among the states and Union territories with at least 500 deaths, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, and Assam observed the biggest jumps in their toll this week.This week, Bengaluru in Karnataka became the third city to cross 200,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus after Pune and Delhi. Among the 219 districts with at least 5,000 confirmed cases so far, the biggest percentage spikes over the last seven days were reported by Gondiya (43%) and Chandrapur (36%) in Maharashtra and Dehradun (41%) in Uttarakhand, data compiled by howindialives.com showed.

Gondiya in Maharashtra reports worst spike in coronavirus cases over past week

Right since the beginning of the pandemic, data has shown that states’ testing strategies can influence the numbers they report. Among the top 10 states, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh have conducted the most tests per million population over the last fortnight, and Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh the fewest, data from covid19india.org showed.India’s total count of coronavirus patients has risen to 5,732,518 as of Thursday morning. The country accounted for 34% of the 2.1 million cases added globally over the last seven days. This is the highest share by far among all countries. The United States and Brazil had 14% and 8% share each, data from the Johns Hopkins University showed.After rising steadily, India’s share in the cumulative death count has crossed 9%. In just the last seven days, the country accounted for 25% of nearly 37,000 deaths recorded globally, nearly equal to both the US and Brazil combined. Worryingly, the trajectory of deaths is still rising.

Globally, the coronavirus case count has crossed 31.8 million, including over 976,000 deaths and nearly 21.9 million recoveries (69%), data from Johns Hopkins University showed.