EVERY four and a half hours India records more COVID-19 cases than Australia has had for the entire pandemic.
On Monday, India became the second worst-hit country in the world, trailing only behind the United States.
Every 100 coronavirus tests taken in India, 11 return a positive result.
India is recording around 900 deaths each day.
Only Brazil is recording higher death tolls at about 1800 per day.
The United States has recorded a total caseload just shy of 32 million.
It continues to record around 55,000 cases per day.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned COVID cases were surging exponentially and had been for seven weeks.
WHO technical lead on COVID-19 Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said the pandemic had reached a “critical point”.
“The trajectory of this pandemic is growing,” she said.
“It is growing exponentially.”
More than 4.4 million new cases had been reported in the last week.
“If you compare that to a year ago, we had about 500,000 cases being reported per week,” Dr Van Kerkhove said.
With more than 780 million vaccine doses administered so far, Dr Tedros stressed their importance in the pandemic but said they were not the only tool.
He said social distancing, masks, hand hygiene, ventilation, surveillance, testing, contact tracing, isolation, supportive quarantine and compassionate care are all essential to the fight against infection.
“But confusion, complacency and inconsistency in public health measures and their application are driving transmission and costing lives,” he said.
Dr Tedros said in some countries, even with high transmission rates, restaurants and nightclubs were full and markets were crowded.
“Some people appear to be taking the approach that if they’re relatively young, it doesn’t matter if they get COVID-19,” he said.
“This disease is not flu. Young, healthy people have died, and we still don’t fully understand the long-term consequences of infection for those who survived.”
In Australia, the Morrison Government has faced criticism over its handling of securing a steady supply of vaccines.
Queensland recorded its first Australian COVID-19 death in almost a year.
He was a returned traveler who has been living in the Philippines.
Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said the man acquired the virus in the Philippines and had traveled through Papua New Guinea.
Dr Young said the 80-year-old tested positive on day five in hotel quarantine.
He was diagnosed in hotel quarantine and admitted to Prince Charles Hospital on March 25. He died late yesterday.
Queenslanders are awaiting the end of mandatory mask rules set to end tomorrow at 6am.
