New Delhi: The official death toll from COVID-19 in India rose to 500,000 on Friday, though many experts believe the actual figure is likely to be much higher.
Daily updates from the country's federal health ministry showed that the death toll has risen from 1,072 to 500,055 in the past 24 hours.
According to the data, total infections stood at 41.9 million, second only to the United States.
The number of cases has jumped in recent weeks due to the highly contagious Omicron strain, but rates have come down in recent days, and the health ministry said last week that virus cases in many parts of the country showed signs of a plateau. Were.
Experts said the oomicron wave will not cause many deaths or hospitalizations, but many states have imposed restrictions on movement and only now started to ease them.
Authorities in the Delhi region on Friday announced that high schools, colleges, restaurants and gyms would be allowed to open from next week.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted, "After a shutdown for almost two years, first due to coronavirus and then due to pollution, individual classes will resume for children between the ages of four and 14.
India was hit by a devastating spike in cases last year because of the delta variant, which brought its health care system close to collapse.
Many analysts believe that the country may have actually reached the 500,000-death mark only last year.
The wave saw at least 200,000 deaths as hospitals ran out of oxygen and patients desperate to source medicines.
Last year a study by a US research group suggested that anywhere between 3.4 million and 4.7 million people were killed.
For months, several states have been reconciling their mortality rates and adding "backlog" deaths as India's Supreme Court ordered state officials to provide compensation to families.
Kerala, Bihar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state Gujarat are among those who have added thousands of chronic deaths to their current toll.
Last month, the Modi government asked states to stop mandatory testing of contacts of those who tested positive, unless they have underlying health conditions.
But soon after the order, the government asked states to ramp up testing if the numbers were low.
Rising sales of home coronavirus self-testing kits have also fueled fears of under-reporting of cases across the country.