More than 100,000 dead from Covid-19 in India.
The bar was passed Saturday, October 3 according to official figures, making India the third country in terms of deaths, after the United States and Brazil.
A total of 100,842 deaths have been recorded, figures from India's Ministry of Health show.
Since the start of the pandemic, 6.47 million cases of contamination have been identified in the second most populous country in the world (1.3 billion inhabitants).
In the coming weeks, India is expected to overtake the United States and become the worst affected country.
Doubts about the accuracy of the numbers
However, the population of India is four times greater than the US population.
The fact that the United States has twice as many deaths as India therefore raises doubts about the accuracy of the Indian figures.
"We don't know how reliable the death rates are in India," virologist T. Jacob John told AFP.
"India does not have a public health surveillance system that would document all cases of illness and death in real time," he said.
While the Indian authorities perform around one million tests per day, as a percentage of the population India's testing rate is much lower than that of many other countries.
The United States, for example, tests proportionately five times as many people as India, according to global statistics site Worldometer.
Economy in free fall
India's leading pandemic agency released a survey on Tuesday suggesting that more than 60 million people - 10 times the official figure - could have contracted Covid-19.
As the number of cases continues to rise, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to open up Asia's third largest economy.
The strict lockdown imposed in March not only failed to stop the spread of the virus, but it also pushed millions of people into poverty, with the loss of their jobs.
In the last quarter, India's economy - which even before the pandemic was struggling - shrank 24%, one of the steepest declines among any major economy.
Apart from certain limited services allowing foreigners to return to their country of origin, international commercial flights remain suspended.
Trains, subways, domestic flights, markets and restaurants have reopened, with some restrictions.
The government also said on Wednesday that all schools could reopen, as well as cinemas and swimming pools, under certain conditions.
With AFP
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