As per the latest statistics, India overtook Brazil's second spot on the list of the most novel coronavirus cases reported today.

• In the past 24 hours, a record rise in new coronavirus infections was reported in India as over 169,000 people tested positive. It is the country's highest-ever single-day tally of the pandemic yet.

Brazil held the second spot on the list of most COVID-19 cases among all the countries for several months as the deadly virus kept wreaking havoc on the most populous South American nation in the last 15 months. But now India has overtaken the second spot and has most cases in the world, second only to the United States.

According to the statistics provided by the website, 'Worldometer', currently, India has 13,525,379 total coronavirus cases while Brazil has 13,482,543 cases. A staggering spike in India's tally has been observed in the third wave of Covid, while Brazil has reported a dip in the number of daily cases being reported in the past couple of months.

It must be noted that the Covid fatality rate of Brazil is more than double that of India's. To date, at least 353,293 Brazilians have died due to coronavirus infection while the number of reported deaths in India is 170,209. This substantiates the theory that there might be different variants of the bug responsible for the havoc in both regions. But nothing can be said with certainty at this point in time as there can be multiple reasons responsible for such contrasting death rates of two nations e.g. genetics, diets, and immunization profiles etc.