India crossed the 5 million mark in COVID-19 cases on Tuesday with the last million recorded in 11 days as against 16 days it took the US, which has reported the highest number of corona cases in the world, to reach the mark.

The worst-hit nation the US tops the COVID-19 case list with 6,462,135 cases (193,119 deaths), India follows with 5,020,360 cases (82,066 deaths) and then comes Brazil with 4,330,455 cases (131,625 deaths).

It took India 167 days to reach 1 million cases, the slowest among the worst-hit countries. This was also the time a strict lockdown was in place in the country. The numbers have rapidly multiplied since then with each subsequent million coming in fewer days.

India now accounts for nearly one-sixth of all COVID-19 infections recorded worldwide since the first outbreak in China’s Wuhan in December 2019. The country also has the highest average daily infections of little more than 93,334 cases, much higher than the US’s 69,373, according to worldometers.info.

The health ministry has attributed the spike in average numbers to a higher number of tests being done. Average daily tests have increased from nearly 780,000 to 1,100,000 in the past month.

But, in what can be seen as some reprieve, India has fared much better in the fatality rate. The case fatality rate (CFR) — the proportion of infected patients who have died — is 1.64%, as compared to the global average of 3.16%. The CFR in the US is 2.95%, and in Brazil it is 3.04%, according to stats provided by the WHO.

The million marks of the worst-hit nations

1st million 98 (US) 114 (Brazil) 167(India)

2nd million 43, 27, 21

3rd million 27, 23, 16

4th million 16, 25, 13

5th million 16, NA, 11

Source: WHO, ICMR, mohfw.gov.in