A private laboratory said that India has reported 276,110 new cases because nearly two-thirds of the people tested showed exposure to COVID-19.

A private laboratory said that India has reported 276,110 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, while the death toll has risen by 3,874 because nearly two-thirds of the people tested were exposed to COVID-19, indicating the virus Has spread out of control.

Data released by the Ministry of Health on Thursday showed that the total number of infections in this South Asian country was 25.77 million and the death toll was 287,122.

For months, India has been hit by the pandemic, as the new variants discovered there cause a surge of up to 400,000 new infections every day.

With the proliferation of hospitals and crematoriums, the health system is overwhelmed, and official figures seriously underestimate the actual impact of the epidemic. This has been widely accepted. Some experts say the probability of infection and death may be five to ten times higher. .

People worry that this new highly infectious variant has gone out of control, and due to lack of testing, many cases have not been reported, especially in the vast rural areas.

Data from the private laboratory chain Thyrocare seems to prove these concerns, showing that an average of 63.5% of people tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies in the past 7 days, compared with 45% a month ago.

The company’s CEO Arokiaswamy Velumani said on Twitter that data from 25 states includes people who have been infected in the past, vaccinated, people who have not been infected, and people who have not been vaccinated.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s criticism has been on the rise, but M Govinda Rao, a former member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Committee, said the speed of the virus’s spread has surprised everyone.

Rao told the Indian newspaper: “The unprecedented speed of the second wave of pandemic completely caught the (state) government and people off guard.”

According to data from the state-run Indian Medical Research Council, the daily test volume on Tuesday reached a record 2 million.

Rio John, a professor at the Rajagiri School of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi, said that this is still lower than India’s declared test capacity of 3.3 million per day.

John also questioned the utility of the test.

John said: “Many of the tests are being deployed in cities, where the cases may have reached a peak, so it is not very useful.” “It’s time to move them to more rural areas, but I doubt that this will be successful.”

Two surveys show that Modi’s approval rate has dropped to a new low.

The voting agency CVOTER found that for the first time in seven years in power, Modi has more people who are dissatisfied than satisfied with the performance of his government.

The hospital had to shut out the patient, and the room and crematorium could not handle the accumulation of bodies.

The photos and TV images of funeral firewood burning in the parking lot and the corpses looted on the banks of the Ganges have caused dissatisfaction with the government.

India is the world’s largest vaccine producer, but its slow vaccination campaign has also been criticized due to insufficient supplies.

The government says about 98% of the 1.35 billion people are still vulnerable to infection.

India stopped vaccine exports a month ago after donating or selling more than 66 million doses of vaccines. Government sources told Reuters that it is unlikely to resume major vaccine exports before at least October due to prioritizing domestic demand.