NEW DELHI: India registered 2003 more COVID-19 deaths in the preceding 24 hours taking the country’s total tally of the pandemic victims to 11,903.
Most of the deaths however had already happened earlier and have now been added by Maharashtra and Delhi as part of a major data reconciliation exercise by these two states, officials in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.
A significant number of deaths added in a day took the case fatality rate due to the disease in the country to 3.3 per cent on Wednesday morning while this figure stood at 2.9 per cent till Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Maharashtra added 1409 deaths of which 866 were from Mumbai alone while 466 were from the rest of the state.
Cumulatively, Maharashtra now has 1,13, 445 confirmed cases and 5, 537 casualties due to the infection.
Delhi added 437 deaths to the tally while 157 deaths were recorded from other states. The number of confirmed cases in the national capital now stands at 44, 688 of whom 1,837 have died.
The country also registered 10, 974 new cases overnight and the total number of confirmed Covid 19 cases in India now stands at 3,54, 065 of which 1,55,227 are active cases.
The third highest deaths, 49,were added from Tamil Nadu on Tuesday which now has 48,019 confirmed cases.
From Gujarat, the fourth worst hit state in the pandemic in India in terms of confirmed cases but with third highest mortalities, 28 deaths were registered overnight. The state, at 6.3 per cent, also has the highest CFR due to the infection in India, way above the national average.
Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, has one of the lowest CFR among the worst hit states in the country, despite having the second highest burden of Covid 19 and much higher case incidence per million than Gujarat.
The 7 day moving average of test positivity rate in India meanwhile has now reached 7 while it is above 23 in Delhi, followed by Maharashtra where it is over 20. This crucial indicator of disease progression is growing in most states of the country according to the Indian Council of Medical Research's National Institute of Epidemiology.