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"This is now an exponential growth. Every day the number of cases is increasing by more than around 30,000. This is really a bad situation for the country. There are so many factors connected with it but overall this is now spreading to rural areas. This is a bad sign. It now shows a community spread," Dr. V K Monga, the Chairman of IMA Hospital Board of India said.

He said that the pandemic is now spreading to towns and villages where it will be very difficult to control the pandemic.

Speaking further about the current situation, Dr Monga said now the novel coronavirus infections are "penetrating down" into towns and villages where it will be "very difficult to control the situation".

“In Delhi, we were able to contain it, but what about interior parts of the country in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Goa, Madhya Pradesh (which may be the new hotspots)?”
“All these issues are very important and the state governments should take full care and seek help of the Central government to control the situation,” Monga said.

As many as 1,34,33,742 samples have been tested for Covid-19 till July 17. Of these 3,61,024 samples were tested on Friday, the ICMR said.

ICMR is ramping up testing facilities regularly. At present, 885 government laboratories and 368 private laboratory chains are conducting COVID-19 tests across the country.

It took India 137 days to reach the million mark (since March 2) in terms of the number of Covid-19 cases, but each quarter of that million has come at a faster pace.

The first 2.5 lakh cases took 98 days. The next quarter of a million cases took less than three weeks (19 days). By July 8, when India was 2.5 lakh cases short of hitting the million mark and it took just eight days for the country to record the last quarter of that million.