India has recorded 2.35 lakh new Coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours. The nations’ curve has shown a slight improvement today as the number of cases is 6 per cent lower than yesterday.
There were 871 fatalities reported which includes 258 backlog deaths from the state of Kerala and 613 fresh casualties due to the COVID-19 virus. Overall around 4.93 lakh people have already lost their lives because of the deadly virus in the past two years. The 613 fresh casualties that were reported today are the highest single-day rise in the third wave of the pandemic.
The active cases now comprise 4.91 per cent of the total cases. The recovery rate of India has gone further down to 93.89 per cent. Around 400 districts in India have recorded over a ten per cent positivity rate in the week that ended on January 26. The vaccination coverage of the nation has crossed 164.04 crore doses all over the country. According to the official data, 95 per cent of India’s eligible adult population has been administered the first dose of the vaccine while almost 74 per cent have been fully vaccinated.
The Union Health Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya has virtually reviewed the coronavirus situation, the public health preparedness with the response measures being taken in view of the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, and Chattisgarh. During a high-level meeting, earlier this week, with the southern States and Union Territories, the Health Minister had stressed teleconsultation, e-Sanjeevani, Monitoring home isolation and the increasing RTPCR in states that have been reporting a relatively lower percentage of testing.
The state of Maharashtra saw the highest surge in daily COVID deaths since October 3 last year. The state reported 103 fatalities in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra still is the state with the highest number of infections with 76,55,554 cases reported so far. The positivity rate of the state is at 10.32 per cent. Although the daily surge in the number of cases today was slightly better in the state than yesterday, it has reported 24,948 cases in the last 24 hours.
The national capital, Delhi has continued to register a decline in the number of COVID infections. Only 4044 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours. The positivity rate of Delhi was 8.60 per cent. The number of active cases in the national capital is 29,152, out of which 23,153 patients have been isolating themselves at home only.
As far as the southern states are considered, Omicron has become the dominant strain in Karnataka with 67.5 per cent of the total samples being tested positive for the variant. The delta variant that took over the nation in the second wave had a 90.7 per cent positivity rate of the total samples, has now taken a backseat with a positivity rate of 26 per cent only.
Coronavirus cases have taken a dip in the northeastern states of the nation except for the state of Mizoram. Mizoram has reported 2,143 new cases with a positivity rate of about 30 per cent in the last 24 hours.
The virus has killed over five million people ever since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019. It has got the world in shackles and a lot of people are dying every day.