India on Wednesday morning registered 71,365 new coronavirus cases, pushing the overall infection count to 4,24,10,976 since the pandemic began in January 2020. The number of new cases was 5.57% higher than Tuesday’s count 67,597 Covid cases.
With 1,217 deaths, the toll climbed to 5,05,279. This includes 591 backlog deaths that Kerala added to its toll on Tuesday.
The daily positivity rate fell to 4.54% from Tuesday’s 5.02%, government data showed. The country’s active caseload stood at 8,92,828 and 4,10,12,869 patients have recovered from the infection so far.
India has so far administered 1,70,87,06,705 vaccine doses to beneficiaries. Of this, 53,61,099 shots were administered in the past 24 hours.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization expressed grief that 5 lakh Covid-19 deaths have been recorded since the Omicron strain of the virus was declared a “variant of concern” in November. The global health body called the toll “beyond tragic”, reported AFP.
The World Health Organization’s incident manager, Abdi Mahamud, also said that 130 million, or 13 lakh, coronavirus cases have been recorded since then.
In India, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told the Rajya Sabha that the Omicron strain is the dominant variant in the country presently but Covid-19 caseload is showing a sustained declining trend since January 21, reported PTI.
Globally, the coronavirus has infected 40.05 crore people and caused 57.62 lakh deaths, data on the Johns Hopkins University showed.
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