#confirmed cases

Despite a surge in cases, India insists there is no community transmission of Covid-19 in the country. "India is such a large country and prevalence is very low," said Balram Bhargava, head of the Indian Medical Research Institute. India has 297,535 confirmed cases - the fourth-highest in the world. Mr Bhargava's comments have caused outrage, with many questioning why when cases are so high, the government says community transmission is not happening.

When it comes to the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, the United States is off the charts compared to other countries. Although the USA comprises five percent of the global population, 32 percent of Covid-19 cases and 25 percent of deaths worldwide are there. By contrast, China, where the novel coronavirus originated, has one-tenth of the number of cases and deaths, despite having a population that is four times larger. A disaster scenario is playing out across the United States, particularly in New York City where scores of refrigerator trucks have been brought in to hold the dead, hundreds of people are dying in their homes without medical attention every day, mass graves are being used to store bodies while mortuaries are overwhelmed, and health professionals lack basic personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and dialysis machines.

On 30th May, India's government announced plans to end a national lockdown that began on 25 March. This was expected - the roads, and even the skies, have been busy for the last 10 days since restrictions started to ease for the first time in two months. Many businesses and workplaces are already open, construction has re-started, markets are crowded and parks are filling up. Soon, hotels, restaurants, malls, places of worship, schools and colleges will also reopen. But the pandemic continues to rage. When India went into lockdown, it had reported 519 confirmed cases and 10 deaths. Now, its case tally has crossed 173,000, with 4,971 deaths. It added nearly 8,000 new cases on Saturday alone - the latest in a slew of record single-day spikes.

York University's Steven Hoffman said while physical distancing and lockdown measures have drastically lowered the number of new cases and hospitalizations in Canada, they continue to rise globally — putting us at further risk. Isolating COVID-19 cases and quarantining contacts is necessary in the Americas in order to prevent further lockdowns, says the World Health Organization. "It's just very likely that so long as this virus is circulating around the world, it will at some point come back to Canada," Hoffman said. "Even if we eliminated it from our country."