India, April 9 -- n Wednesday morning, some TV channels that use the health ministry's data on Covid-19 put out an alarming number - that the number of cases had increased by 773 in the previous 24 hours, after increasing by only 354 in the 24 hours prior to that. This wasn't entirely accurate, simply because, while the number of cases did increase by 773, not all cases were discovered in the previous 24 hours. Indeed, that's the reason HT's own numbers are usually different from the ministry's. The HT number is based on two data sources - a tracker on Covid19india.org, a data resource site maintained by volunteers, and, more importantly, releases from state health departments. Some of the latter come out late in the evening, and HT collates all of them up at 10.30pm (sometimes 10.45pm). We started doing this after we realised that the health ministry was collating data with a lag. This may cause people to misinterpret the data. For instance, according to the numbers collated by HT, there were 526 new cases till late Tuesday evening. The corresponding number on Monday evening was 582, and Sunday 515. Clearly, there was no real spike on Tuesday as a jump from 354 new cases to 773 new cases would indicate....