In a queue for a PCR test in Jammu, India.

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Channi Anand / AP / SIPA

India crossed the five million coronavirus case mark on Wednesday, according to figures from the Ministry of Health, as the pandemic spreads at an increasingly rapid rate across the country.

The second most populous nation on the planet, which recorded a million new infections in just eleven days, now has 5.02 million cases, just behind the United States, which has 6.59 million.

As of Wednesday, the number of new cases rose to more than 90,000 and the number of deaths to 1,290, which is a record figure.

If India took 167 days to reach one million cases, the next million were identified in just twenty-one days, according to the

Times of India

daily

, a rate of progression of the pandemic much faster than that from the United States and Brazil.

Probably from 6.5 million "unofficial" cases as early as May

Barely 29 days later, India became the third country in the world in terms of number of cases, after the United States and Brazil, and more than 4 million people were infected as of September 5.

Two days later, it became the second country in the world by number of cases, after the United States.

India now tests around a million people per day which many experts say is enough.

They believe that the actual number of infections could be much higher.

This hypothesis is confirmed by studies carried out in recent weeks which measured the antibodies against the virus present in the inhabitants of the mega-cities of New Delhi and Bombay.

The Indian Council for Medical Research, which coordinates the government's response to the crisis, estimated last week that its investigation suggested that in May already 6.5 million people were infected.

The death toll stood at a total of 82,066 on Wednesday - a figure that is less than half of the 195,000 death toll in the United States - many not properly recorded by authorities even in normal times.

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