This archive report was first published on 27 June 2020.
As of June 27, 2020, India's COVID-19 death toll has surpassed 15,000, with 385 new fatalities reported in the past 24 hours.
The country's densely populated cities, particularly New Delhi, are struggling to cope with the rapid spread of the virus, with the city's government predicting that it will have 500,000 infections by the end of July.
Delhi authorities have called in 33,000 health workers to screen about two million people in sealed off zones across the city of 20 million people, in a bid to boost tracing efforts.
However, cities across the nation of 1.3 billion people are braced for a huge wave of new cases in coming weeks, with experts warning that the number of cases could pass one million before the end of July.
"It is likely that we're going into a state, unless we are able to reinforce a strict physical distancing mechanism or a hard lockdown, where the rate of infection will continue to increase," said Anant Bhan, a leading public health expert.
