India surpasses Brazil as second-most-infected country

India surpassed Brazil on Monday as the country with the second-highest total number of COVID-19 infections recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.

A collection of data from health officials around the world mapped by Johns Hopkins University indicated that India now sits in second place in terms of total recorded infections with 13.52 million following a jump of nearly 169,000 cases overnight, according to Indian health officials.

The numbers of new cases being recorded by health officials are the highest India has seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Brazil’s rate of new cases has remained under 100,000 per 24-hour period in recent weeks, though it too is experiencing its highest levels of COVID-19 infection rates since the pandemic began.

Both countries lag far behind the U.S., which has recorded more total infections than Brazil and India combined. India is vaccinating its population at a much higher rate than Brazil, with health officials in India reporting an average of 4 million doses of vaccine administered per day, compared with less than 1 million per day in Brazil.

Though India has surpassed Brazil in total cases, it lags far behind in terms of total deaths resulting from the disease; just more than 170,000 people have died from COVID-19 in India, according to data from Johns Hopkins, while more than double that number have died in Brazil since the pandemic began.