A man wearing a protective face mask walks past graffiti in Mumbai depicting the Mona Lisa wearing a mask, gloves and holding a sanitiser bottle [Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters]

New Delhi, April 1 (RHC)-- The situation with the COVID-19 pandemic in India is going “from bad to worse,” a senior government official has said.   “We are facing an increasingly severe and intense situation, more so surely in some districts. But the whole country is potentially at risk,” Vinod K Paul, chairman of the government’s expert panel on vaccine administration said at the weekly health ministry briefing.

India on Wednesday reported 53,480 new cases of the coronavirus, health ministry data showed – the second day that cases have risen less than the day before.   But the number of deaths was at its highest since mid-December, according to a Reuters news agency tally, with 354 people dying of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the ministry said, taking total mortalities to 162,468.

India has been reporting a spike in cases this month, with its richest state of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, accounting for most of its caseload.

More than 68,000 new coronavirus cases were reported on Monday, the highest in a single day in five months. On Tuesday, at least 56,000 fresh cases were reported across India, with Maharashtra accounting for more than 31,000 of them.