India has surpassed the 20,000 death barrier officially attributed to the new pandemic coronavirus, which continues to spread across the country and has led Mumbai to open four new field hospitals.

The epidemic is particularly aggressive in the large Indian cities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Madras.

According to experts, the peak of the epidemic will not be reached before several weeks, despite two months of confinement (from the end of March to the beginning of June).

In the Mumbai agglomeration, which alone accounts for almost 25% of the 20,160 covid-19 deaths recorded in India, officials on Tuesday opened four additional field hospitals – one with 700 beds, built on a racecourse – to receive patients.

The new infrastructures add 3,500 beds to the megalopolis of 20 million inhabitants, where traditional hospitals have been saturated for several weeks by the great flow of sick people.

The municipality has claimed several public spaces in recent months to turn them into health facilities.

India yesterday became the third country in the world in number of declared cases, surpassing Russia and behind the United States and Brazil.

The country of 1.3 billion inhabitants has, so far, 719,665 confirmed cases of covid-19.

Despite the end of the confinement in early June, many health restrictions remain in place in the second most populous nation on the planet.

International flights have been banned since March.

Source: kenyannews