The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has been sternly disturbing India to brace up the unprecedented grounds of spread and the resurgence has alarmingly put the government under hard challenges in containing the spread. The country has been witnessing the biggest jump in infections for the past few weeks and recording a never-reported-before rise in daily cases. As the sequel of the resurgence, India has now surpassed Brazil and become the second-worst affected country in the world. 

In the last 24 hours till Monday morning 8 am, India has reported 1,68,912 fresh COVID-19 cases, which had become the highest single-day rise that the country has recorded since the outbreak began. While the country was going through the first wave last year, the cases were breaching 90,000 and neared 1 lakh but it had never gone past 1 lakh. However, the current graph of cases had worried the country as India has been witnessing over 1 lakh cases consistently for the past few days. 

On April 8, India has reported 1,31,968 cases and on April 10, the country has recorded 1,52,879 cases, the highest until Monday's trend which went past 1.60 lakh by reporting 1,68,912 cases in the last 24 hours. According to Reuters, India has overtaken Brazil and had become the second most affected country in the world by the COVID-19 pandemic after the United States. 

With the unprecedented spike, India's overall tally has reached 13.53 million, surpassing Brazil's 13.45 million cases. The United States has been leading the global tally of the most number of cases with 31.2 million cases. India has put the overwhelming number of cases and heavily contributed to the global tally in the last 14 days. India has reported 13,87,181 COVID-19 cases in the fortnight between March 28 and April 10, which the highest global count. 

During the same period, Brazil has reported 9,54,644 cases and the United States has recorded 9,32,344 cases. According to the Union Health Ministry, India has reported 1,68,912 new cases, 75,086 discharges, and 904 deaths in the last 24 hours. In total, the country has recorded 1,35,27,717 cases so far of which 12,01,009 are active, 1,21,56,529 cases have been discharged, and 1,70,179 people had succumbed to the viral infection. 

On the front of states, India's richest state Maharashtra has been recording heavy caseloads than any other states as it has been contributing 50% of cases in India's total tally. Of 1,68,912 fresh cases, 63,294 cases were from Maharashtra, and in the last 14 days from March 28 to April 10, Maharashtra has reported 6,70,490 cases. The Health Ministry said that, besides Maharashtra, the states like Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Chhattishgarh have reported heavy caseloads. 

Most of these states have re-inforced curfews and tight restrictions to curb the spread with the administrations imposing a penalty on the people who are found to be violating the COVID-19 norms by not wearing face masks and observing social distancing. On the other hand, the highest infection rate has come amid the largest vaccination drive as India has been going through the second phase of the vaccination program, which has been concentrating to inoculate the COVID-19 vaccines for people more than 45 years of age. 

The sharp rise of the cases has pushed the government to consider vaccinating people above 18 years. India's robust vaccination drive is among the highest in the world and the country's vaccination has crossed 100 million on Saturday. India has reached the mark of 100 million vaccinations in 85 days and the country had administered an average of over 3.5 million vaccines a day last week and it aims to inoculate 5 million vaccines a day. 

According to the Health Ministry, India has vaccinated 10,45,28,565 people so far as of Sunday and while the country has two vaccines on the ground, India is likely to approve the third vaccine soon. The reports say that the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) will be meeting on Monday to take up the application of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine for emergency use authorization in India. The development has come in the wake of the exponential rise of COVID-19 cases. It is expected that Sputnik V would get the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) within the next ten days.