July is usually the cruelest month in India. It’s too hot, humid, and rainy. Still worse, it is a long month (31 days) and doesn’t have any national holidays. The month — it’s still not over — has also seen a significant rise in the number of coronavirus disease cases in India.

In the month since June 24, India has added 63% of its total cases (1.28 million on Thursday night). It has added 51% of its total deaths (30,630) in this period.

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It isn’t just India that has seen an acceleration over the past month. The world has added 40% of its total cases (15.6 million) and 23% of its deaths (635,666) in this period. The US has added 40% of its total cases (4.1 million) and 14% of its deaths (144,283). And Brazil has added 48% of its cases (2.28 million) and 36% of its deaths (84,207). The numbers (here and elsewhere in this column) are from HT’s dashboard, the NYT database, and worldometers.info.

I have picked these three countries because they are the countries with the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the world. And they have pretty much driven the growth in numbers over the past month around the world. A month ago, the average (seven-day) contribution of these three countries to daily new cases was just around half (51%). On July 23, the average was 60%. The average (again seven-day) daily cases in the world grew 56% in this period. It grew 109% in the US, 18% in Brazil (whose numbers have swung), and 167% in India.

Thus, while the virus is making its presence felt in new geographies, and raising its head again in some parts of Europe (which was expected as countries opened up; and the flare-ups are not really of alarming proportions), most of the world’s cases are still coming from three of the largest countries in terms of both geographical area and population. This isn’t surprising. Countries spread across a huge area, and with many states, are likely to see the coronavirus follow different temporal trajectories across regions. That’s what is happening in the US. That is what is happening in Brazil. And that is what is beginning to happen in India.

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In theory, the pandemic should have behaved the same way in China, where the virus originated, but given Beijing’s lack of transparency about anything related to Covid-19, the world has no way of knowing how the pandemic played out (and is playing out) in that country.

In India, the trend is clear.

At one time, Delhi, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu together accounted for two of every three cases in the country. Over the past week, though, the three have averaged a little over one in three (38.5%). On Thursday, the proportion was 36%. Maharashtra continues to show more cases (mostly outside Mumbai, but while the number of cases in the city has fallen, the positivity rate is still high enough to indicate that not enough testing is happening), as does Tamil Nadu, although the state’s positivity rate has been plateauing for weeks, and Delhi has seen a sharp fall in daily cases. The majority of India’s cases are now coming from other parts of the country, including some that were once being touted as role models for managing Covid-19.

Karnataka, for instance, saw 5,030 new cases on Thursday and its total tally stands at 80,863. In the past week alone, the state has added close to 30,000 cases. But numbers are also rising in other states: Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Kerala, Gujarat, and Telangana. Much like the US, India should be prepared for a second phase of the virus’ run here. In the US, the slope of this curve has been steeper than that in the first phase. It is likely India will see the same thing.