By Aparna Alluri and Shadab Nazmi
The coronavirus took hold slowly in India, but six months after its first confirmed infection it has overtaken Russia to record the world’s third largest caseload.
With the world’s second-largest population, much of which lives packed into cities, the country was perhaps always destined to become a global hotspot.
But the data behind its case numbers is questionable, because India is not testing enough, and an unusually low death rate has baffled scientists.
Here’s five things we know about the spread of coronavirus in India.
India has seen a series of record spikes recently, adding tens of thousands of cases daily. It recorded most of its confirmed cases in June, within weeks of reopening after a rigid lockdown.
As of 8 July, India had 742,417 confirmed cases.