NEW DELHI: The Covid-19 tally recorded yet another biggest single-day spike with 8,909 fresh cases reported in the 24 hours since Tuesday 8 am, taking the total count to 2,07,615 across India. The death toll rose by 217 in this period, taking the number of total fatalities to 5,815. The number of active cases has also risen to more than 1.01 lakh.
The silver lining in the Union Health Ministry’s update was that at least 1,00,302 COVID-19 patients have recovered, with the overall recovery rate being over 48 per cent. While the badly-hit states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Delhi saw a jump in infections, new cases continued to surface in eastern and Northeastern states such as Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim. India is the seventh worst-hit nation after the US, Brazil, Russia, the UK, Spain and Italy.
The health ministry said the number of Covid tests across the country has crossed the 40 lakh-mark. The daily testing capacity has been ramped up to 1.4 lakh through 480 government and 208 private laboratories and attempts are on to further increase the capacity to two lakh tests per day, said sources.
Among southern states, Kerala reported its highest single-day spike of 86 cases, taking its tally to 1,494. Tamil Nadu also reported its highest single-day spike of 1,286 cases, with total confirmed cases going up to 25,872. The state also saw 11 more fatalities, taking the count to 208. Gujarat’s tally of confirmed cases rose by 485 to touch 18,117, while death toll increased by 30 to 1,122.
Maharashtra, the worst-hit state, reported 122 deaths, the highest for a day, while the count of positive cases rose by 2,560 to 74,860. A total of 2,587 people have died of Covid-19 in the state.