Kathmandu, Sept. 6 -- On 5 September, India tallied a record 90,600 new cases of the novel coronavirus in a single day - more than any other country since the pandemic began. India will soon overtake Brazil to have the second-highest caseload after the United States.

India's National Statistical Office revealed last week that the country's output between April and June 2020 was 24% lower than in the same period the previous year. This was the first time India had recorded a quarter of negative growth since it began issuing such data publicly in 1996.

No other big economy has by shrunk so much during the pandemic. In the same period, the GDP of the United States fell by just over 9%. What had seemed a dismal economic performance by India...