India’s Covid-19 tally rises to 2.5 million

A massive surge of over 63,000 new coronavirus infections since Saturday has taken India's tally past 25.89 lakh cases, the Indian Health Ministry said yesterday, adding that more than 900 Covid-linked deaths were recorded in the period.

India has been reporting more cases in a day than the United States and Brazil, which have a higher caseload, for the last 12 days, according to the World Health Organization data.

As many as 63,490 new Covid-19 cases were detected, and 944 people died due to the virus in the country in the past 24 hours.

There are still 677,444 active Covid-19 cases in India, while a total of 1,862,258 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals across the country.

The recovery rate of Covid-19 cases has risen to nearly 72 per cent, even as the death rate has come down to below 2 per cent, the ministry said.

Over the past weeks, India has ramped up the testing of samples.

Till Saturday a total of 29,309,703 samples has been tested, out of which 746,608 samples were tested on Saturday alone, said the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Indian scientists have been working on developing Covid-19 vaccine.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in his Independence Day speech on Saturday that as many as three vaccines were in different stages of trials.

He said that once scientists gave the green signal, the country would take up mass production of the vaccines and ensure that every Indian national gets access to the vaccine.

On global stage, the pandemic has killed at least 766,228 people since surfacing in China late last year, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP yesterday.

At least 21,500,350 cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 13,205,100 are now considered recovered.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.

On Saturday, 5,663 new deaths and 264,102 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 1,105 new deaths, followed by India with 944, and Brazil with 709.

Overall, the United States has recorded the most deaths with 169,489, followed by Brazil with 107,232, Mexico with 56,543, India with 49,980 and Britain with 41,361.